As She Climbed Across the Table

“I guess so. Hah! She didn’t like me.”

I looked up. “You only stuck in your hand,” I said. “Lack takes whole things.”

“No, my friend. I gave him the chance. I went on the table too. But I couldn’t go in. Lack said no.”

“What about Alice, then? If Lack won’t take Alice herself—”

“So?” Braxia shrugged. “Alice does not approve of herself. Is not unprecedented, I think.”

“So Lack knows things about Alice that she doesn’t know herself. About her tastes. Lack could be used as a way of testing Alice’s judgments, in an absolute sense. Even if she’s denying the part of herself that feels that way—”

“Maybe. Who knows? Hah. Once we used scientists to learn more about physics. Now we use physics to learn more about the scientists! Forget it. Very inefficient. I’ll go to Pisa and start over.”

“Yes. Do that.”

“Be happy, my dear fellow. The term is over. Drink up. Oh boy. You think they will let me on a plane like this?”

I didn’t say anything. I was fathoms deep in my own sea.

Braxia’s inane grin slipped away. “What’s the matter?” he said. “You still love her? After this?”

“I still love her, Braxia.”

“Okay. But you worry too much.” Drunk, he was more perfunctory with his English. “Lack will close. You will have her back. If you want her.”

“She doesn’t love me anymore.”

“You explain what I said, explain everything. Tell her my theories. Claim as your own. Then you will have her back.”

“I don’t want to tell her what you said.”

“Okay, okay.” He put down his glass and got off the couch. “Come here.” He tugged at my sleeve. “Come.” He led me to the bathroom door, which was backed with a mirror. “Look at yourself, Engstrand. You are a mess. It’s been a long term, yes? Take yourself home now. Go to bed. You will feel better.”

I looked. There stood a mess. The self-unmade man. Just a question of composure, though. I patted down my hair, practiced a smile. Outside was fresh air, elixir. I had things to do tonight, and the fresh air would help me.

But I wanted to conceal my intentions from Braxia. The party, and the destination beyond.

“So,” he said, his point proven. He led me through the obstacle course of his luggage, to the door. “Go home. Think nice things. Have a dream. Forget about her, if only tonight. Think again in the morning.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll think in the morning.”

He unlocked the door, then pushed me through with a series of hearty slaps on the back. “Go home,” he said, like he was talking to a wayward dog. “I see you later. We can have an international conference or something. Good-bye!”

“Okay,” I said. “Good-bye.”

The air was invigoratingly cold. My drunken eyes couldn’t adjust to the darkness, but it didn’t matter. I knew my way. I wobbled away from the porch, back toward my apartment. I wanted to mislead Braxia. I wasn’t sure he knew where I lived, but I wasn’t taking any chances. My legs buckled once, and I adjusted, compensated for the handicap. I was okay. I turned to see Braxia smiling at me from the door, a black smear in a blinding frame. He waved. I waved back. When I heard the door shut behind me I swerved, and headed, through the darkness, in the opposite direction. Toward the party.

34

“Philip! I was afraid you weren’t coming. Have a drink.”

It was Soft. Unaccountably gleeful, he grabbed my arm and led me to the makeshift bar. The room was already brimming, the air filled with a gabble of overlapping conversations that peaked and ebbed like automatic gunfire. I entered a maze of bobbing and ducking heads, with faces that crunched up with ironic anguish or jawed open wide with laughter, nostrils flaring, ears burning red, cigarettes and glasses and food shifted from orifices to holders and back again by subservient hands. Every head made up the maze, the remorseless consensual nightmare, and every head wandered through it, lost, frightened, alone.

Here I’d find a parting taste of the human world, perhaps even a voice to call me back from the brink. At the very least, a chance to stall.

“No,” I said. “I’ve had a drink already.”

“It’s Christmas.”

“Yes.”

“Eggnog, Philip.”

He handed me a plastic cup full of frothy nog and hollow cylindrical ice cubes. I tasted it, to be polite, and a surprising amount entered my mouth. Soft grinned, happy to see me drink. I grinned back, happy to see him happy.

“What’s the good word?” I said.

“It’s almost over.”

“It is over.”

“I don’t mean the term.” He grinned again, as if that were sufficient explanation. I wondered if I’d missed something in the din.

“What do you mean?” I said finally.

“Lack. He’s closing up. Going away.”

We were attacked by a costumed waitress with a tray of hors d’oeuvres, tiny wrinkled crackers spackled with phosphorescent pink mortar. She wore a dewy black nose. She was forced to carry the tray so high that her face appeared situated there itself, offered with the food. Soft turned and the tray came up under his chin. He reached around and guided a cracker into his mouth. With their chins each resting on the tray it looked like a sexual act, the pink smears surrogate tongues.

She turned to me. “No, thank you,” I said. I ducked to open a route of escape for her tray. She jostled past us. I looked at Soft, who was chewing with his mouth open. “You were saying something about Lack.”

“Yes,” he said, swallowing. “Braxia told me this afternoon that he thought it would close up. Lack, that is. So I went down an hour ago and took some measurements. Sure enough. He’s attenuating. I estimate another week or so.”

He lifted his cup, beaming. I raised mine, and we drank.

“Attenuating,” I said.

Soft nodded.

So Braxia was right. Lack would go away. It didn’t change my plan, only made it more urgent and absolute. A shudder of fear went through me. I tipped my cup back, and drained away the last of my eggnog, then let a piece of ice slip into my mouth and sucked it clean of the sweet residue.

Soft finished his own nog and smiled at me dizzily, a smear of cream on his upper lip. It clearly wasn’t his first glass. He was drunker than I was. And happier. Maybe that was the answer for now. I should be as drunk and happy as Soft.

“He’s fabulous when he gets behind the wheel,” came a voice out of the crowd. Then a roar of admiring laughter. I took Soft’s cup away with mine, to get a refill. The bartender was one of my students. He filled the cups from a bowl, then made a show of splashing in an extra portion of rum from a concealed bottle. He winked, and I winked back. I was planning to fail him. He handed me the cups. They were too full to carry. I took a sip from the top of each and inadvertently slurped off the two mouthfuls of undiluted rum that floated there.

I brought them back to Soft. He smiled. I leaned in close to his pale, small face, and whispered, “Let’s turn this party on its ear.”

He raised his eyebrows, looking stricken. “I don’t know how,” he said.

“Just follow me.”