Wonderland (43 page)

He ordered cocktails for them and made suggestions for dinner, reading off the menu to them. “I’ve been here several times. They serve excellent food here. It’s very reliable. In fact, my parents wanted to take Jesse here the last time they were visiting me but Jesse was too busy that evening.”

Jesse’s head ached. All this troubled him, irritated him: Trick’s talk and Helene’s cautious quick agreement … the drone of other Sunday customers, travelers and parents visiting their children at the university.… So many people, so many crowded tables, so many confusing conversations! Jesse never ate in restaurants like this. It sickened him a little, the din of voices and silverware, the expense, the ceremony of food heaped upon plates, each table centered inward upon food and drink. Their drinks arrived and Trick proposed a toast to their wedding and their lifelong happiness. Jesse wondered if he was joking: but no, he looked serious.

“Yes, to your lifelong happiness—to your happiness!” Trick said.

Jesse fixed his gaze upon a complicated brass chandelier and tried not to pay much attention to what Trick was saying. He returned to the topic of the letters again, apologized again, and chided Helene gently once again about having forgotten about the correct time. Jesse’s heart pounded with a sudden rage, because of course Helene had been right about the time and Trick wrong—and yet Trick kept insisting that he was right! Jesse did not dare to look at him. He was relieved when Helene murmured something placid, something agreeable—a vague apology for having forgotten the time—“I have so much to think of,” she said.

“Ah yes, obviously you do!” Trick said at once. “In your life I am not a very crucial event. Obviously! In spite of my bulk, I am about the size of the jack of hearts seen sideways—or am I the joker maybe?” When Helene did not reply and Jesse sat silent, he went on to talk about the coming year and his expectations in Boston. He had many years of study ahead and he would have to undergo a formal psychoanalysis. He intended to be a psychoanalyst himself. “How ironic, you are thinking …?” he joked, but it was no joke, and neither Helene nor Jesse responded. After a moment Helene spoke of their plans for the next week. They would drive down and move Jesse into the interns’ residence hall. She planned to stay in Chicago for a while, perhaps she would get a job there, try to save a little money.… Trick laughed at this, as if to suggest that Helene did not need to have money with so wealthy a father; Jesse felt another pang of rage. He finished his drink.

Trick ordered another round immediately.

“But Trick, I haven’t finished my drink … I really don’t want another,” Helene said.

Trick leaned against the table, big and anxious, his hair coming loose on one side of his head and falling lankly forward. Jesse narrowed his eyes and tried to look at Trick. He had been seeing that earnest, mottled skin for too many months. And that mouth. That moving mouth. And Trick’s big feet under the table, crowding against Jesse’s. Even when Jesse moved his legs to one side Trick bumped into them.

“A cigarette. Let’s all have a cigarette,” Trick said.

He offered cigarettes to Helene, who did not smoke, and to Jesse, who thought suddenly that he would like to smoke—but he hesitated, then refused. He would not take one of Trick’s cigarettes.

Trick’s hands were trembling. He sucked at the cigarette and then
at his drink, holding one in each hand. There was a feverish cast to his eyes. “I don’t think you forgive me,” he said finally.

“Trick, please—” Helene said.

“It’s Jesse. Jesse doesn’t forgive me.”

“Jesse does. He does.”

“Why doesn’t he look at me?”

With difficulty Jesse forced himself to look Trick in the eye. “I am looking at you. I forgive you,” he said. His mouth smiled absurdly.

“As soon as I mailed the first letter I knew I had made a terrible mistake.…”

“Please don’t keep thinking about it,” Helene said.

“But I’ll keep thinking about it the rest of my life. It’s one of the events of my life,” Trick said.

“We can talk of other things tonight.…”

“Yes, other things … we can talk of other things.… I should be able to express myself more coherently,” Trick muttered. “I want only to please you. The two of you. I don’t want you to leave Ann Arbor hating me. But what can a man say to two people in love, people who are going away together …? People in love don’t need anyone else to complete them or to say good-by to them or to take them out to dinner. Obviously not. They only acquiesce to their friends out of charity.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Jesse said.

“Jesse is irritated with me. Yes. I knew it. I anticipated it. I stayed up all night last night and wrote some poems.… Would you like to see them?”

Trick seemed not to notice that the waitress was bringing their dinners to them, and as he reached awkwardly into his coat pocket he nearly jostled her. “Oh, excuse me!” he cried. “I didn’t see you … are you back already?… Everything is going so fast.…”

“We can read the poems later. It’s too dark in here,” Jesse said.

“You can hold them up to the light,” Trick said.

He handed them across the table to Jesse and Helene while the waitress put down their plates. Jesse wanted to tear up the pieces of paper and toss them in Trick’s face.

Helene held up the first piece of paper. “Why do you call them ‘Poems Without People’? That’s such a strange title.…”

“Because, because I can’t write about people. I don’t know anything about people,” Trick said eagerly. He hunched forward against the
table, pushing himself onto the edge of his chair. His knee nudged Jesse’s. “What do you think? Which one are you reading? I’m sorry I didn’t have time to type them out … my handwriting looks like hell.…”

Jesse looked on while Helene held the piece of paper up to the light.

“What do you think? What do you think of it?” Trick said.

He was talking very loudly.

Jesse, who made no sense of the poem and who felt a sudden violent exasperation with Trick, took the poems from Helene and folded them in two. “We can talk about this after dinner,” he said.

“Oh … did you fold them?” Trick asked.

They turned to their dinner—Jesse picked up his fork angrily;
Trick picked up his knife and fork as if he had no idea of what to do with them. He sawed at the meat on his plate. He cut his steak into several large pieces and raised one to his mouth. “I’m only guessing at life,” he said humbly. “The only person I can write about is myself. That’s why I call the sequence of poems ‘Poems Without People.’ Because the only person in them is myself and I don’t count.”

Trick glanced at the meat on his fork and lowered it to his plate, confused.

For some reason Jesse felt his mouth twisting into a smile—a grin. He laughed out loud. Trick glanced up at once, blinking. “Why are you laughing, Jesse? Are you laughing at me? In front of
her
?”

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Jesse said.

But his face was still oddly, brightly amused—he could hardly keep from laughing again.

Trick cut the piece of meat into two smaller pieces. His movements were brisk and self-conscious. “I like to see Jesse laugh. I shouldn’t complain. He doesn’t laugh often enough for a young man his age. I like to see the two of you together, smiling together. Do you know I’ve followed you? Oh yes,” he said gravely, nodding. He put down both his knife and fork and stared at the heaped food on his plate. Mashed potatoes, glazed carrots, a large greasy juicy steak.… He seemed unable to think of what to do with all this. He glanced up at Jesse, smiling. “Yes, I might as well admit it. I have no shame. I’ve often followed the two of you at a discreet distance, in disguise. Sometimes in disguise as a trash barrel, sometimes as a dancing bear.… But it’s so cruel to be always kept at a distance, especially a discreet distance.…”

“Trick, are you joking?” Helene asked nervously.

“Joking,” Trick said flatly. He seemed to be testing, tasting the words. He shook his head no.
No
. Confused, he picked up a large roll and broke it into smaller pieces; he buttered one of the pieces crudely, but then put it down on the tablecloth near his plate. His eyes skimmed over Jesse’s and Helene’s plates.

“You aren’t enjoying your dinner. You aren’t eating anything.”

Jesse and Helene had not touched their food.

“Why aren’t you eating with me? Do I offend you?” Trick said.

“Trick, please.… You must be joking,” Helene said.

“You accepted my offer to take you out and then you forgot about the time. Deliberately. You tried to imply that I had come an hour
early in order to embarrass me. And now you’ve come out with me, as my guests, and you won’t eat in order to embarrass me. You are demonstrating that in my presence you have no appetite!” Trick pushed his own plate away from him abruptly. The tablecloth was pulled up and Trick’s water glass would have been upset if Jesse hadn’t steadied it. “You are passing judgment on me and I can’t stop you. You can see right through me into my brain. Shall I confess something …? I did a terrible thing a few days ago. I did it with
you
in mind, Helene. In a cadaver room … I had an idea suddenly … the idea came to me the way my poems come to me, in a fierce rush, like a dream … in a cadaver room I helped myself to a piece of a human being.…”

He smiled slyly at them.

“Yes, a human being … I helped myself.… I know I shouldn’t be telling you this. But I think I will. I want to confess everything. I cut out of a female about your age, Helene, a uterus that was not at all damaged, and I took it home with me in a brown paper bag and kept it in the refrigerator for a while … and then I did a very strange thing; I tried to broil it.… I wanted to broil it and eat it like chicken, which it resembles to some extent.…”

Jesse and Helene stared.

“What …?” Jesse said.

“It broiled unevenly. Part of it got burned and part of it was raw. And it didn’t taste like chicken,” Trick said with a shiver, though he was still smiling.

“Are you joking again?” Jesse said in amazement.

Trick’s face hardened. “Jokes. What are jokes? I don’t know what a joke is,” he said contemptuously. He glanced at Helene and his face screwed up as if he were about to spit. “You don’t have any appetite, eh? You are rather bloodless, Helene. How will you be a match for this fiery young man?”

“Jesse, I think we should leave,” Helene said faintly.

Jesse helped her up.

“We’ll get a taxi back. Don’t bother coming with us,” Jesse said.

“Leaving, you’re leaving already …? Why is everything going so fast?” Trick said vacantly. He stared at Jesse. “Oh, please … don’t leave so soon.… I’ve been waiting for this evening for so long, for so many hours.…”

“We’re leaving,” Jesse said angrily.

Trick followed them, protesting. He was carrying his napkin. “Oh, please don’t leave?” he cried. People stared at him. “Don’t abandon me! Why do people fear honesty, why do they betray their friends when their friends expose their hearts? You know I love you, both of you. But you’re walking away. You’re forcing me to chase after you.”

“Stay the hell away from us,” Jesse said. “Nobody’s forcing you to do anything.”

“He’s sick,” Helene whispered.

“Come on. Let’s get a taxi,” Jesse said.

They hurried to the corner but Trick followed after them, panting. When, in a rage, Jesse glanced around, he saw Trick’s big flushed face and his hand, with the napkin in it, closed into a fist and pressed against his chest. Behind him, in the large, ornate doorway of the restaurant, someone was calling after them. Trick said loudly, “A poet can express himself obliquely, in poems, he can say things that his friend won’t allow him to say in the daylight! I have another poem called ‘Mouth’ that is dedicated to Jesse. It’s about my own mouth. You left it back in the restaurant but I can recite it—”

“Go to hell!”

Trick called after them in a shrill, oratorical voice. “My poem is called ‘Mouth.’ It goes like this—
That mouth. Enormous. / It is an opening like sand / falling beneath your feet—/ a surprise of a hole, falling away / suddenly
—”

“Will you shut up! Go to hell” Jesse cried.

“At the rim of the mouth / you surprise yourself / you are eager to be—”

“Shut up!”

“You’re confusing me, I can’t remember the rest of it—Jesse, you’re confusing me—
At the rim of the mouth—at the rim—You become this pulp / you surrender your name
—I can’t remember the right order. You’ve confused me.” People on the sidewalk had stopped to stare at Trick. He caught up to Jesse and Helene and took hold of Jesse’s arm. “Jesse, you have no lyricism in your soul. Your soul is pure and abstract. He has plans for his future, Helene, that are pure and abstract and criminal! He told me himself. He wants to do only good and to save people, he doesn’t want to stick his nose in anybody’s mucus—but still he’s planning a family, Helene, four or five children at least—he told me so himself! But the mother-to-be at that time was wider in the pelvis than you. Or does he want five children from you, too?”