Like many men who find love when they are no longer in the full bloom ofvigor and health, Daniel has made a promise to himself to get back in shape.For a couple ofnights, he tried doing calisthenics at home, but it seemed disrespectful to Kate to be grunting out sit-ups in the same room they conduct their wounded, slowly expiring relation-ship.Those exercises were a kind ofcelebratory dance ofhealth, and his workout wear ofbaggy cotton shorts and a baggier old grayT-shirt was in fact the uniform ofhis new devotion:they may as well have borne Iris’s name on the back.He is in training to be her lover.One day soon Kate will understand that the sexual Mount Everest Daniel is in training to scale has nothing to do with her, and when this grim domestic knowl-edge is complete Daniel does not want her to conjure a vision ofhim do-ing abdominal crunches on their bedroom floor.
As a less ostentatious form ofbody toning, Daniel decides to forego lunch and to spend the time vigorously walking through the village of Leyden, which now, nine days after the October snow, is just getting back to normal, with businesses long closed for lack ofelectrical power finally reopening, and employees finally able to show up for work.The mood ofthe town is festive, as ifat the victorious end ofa war.No one can get enough oftalking about what befell them during the storm and the blackout, what they learned, what they lost, how they coped.
Daniel’s great story ofthe October storm, however, cannot be told, and its necessary suppression has dampened his normally gregarious nature.
He is content to replay memories ofhis days and nights with Iris with-out any interruption as he walks the circumference ofthe town’s com-mercial center.The problem really is that walking doesn’t feel like exercise, and as soon as he makes it once around the village, he realizes that he looks halfmad speed-walking in his suit and street shoes, and also that he is too young for walking, speed or otherwise, to make much of an impact on him.On his second time through the village, he hears someone call his name, and though he has promised himself that he will ignore all distractions, he stops immediately and turns to face Bruce Mc-Fadden, an old friend from Daniel’s childhood days in Leyden.
“Hey, bro, what it is,”McFadden says in some vaguely self-mocking approximation ofblack street slang, putting his palm out for a little skin.
McFadden, a tall, flimsily knit-together man, with long, lustrous brown hair, bright-green eyes, and a pale face with hectic bursts ofcolor at the cheekbones, is about as black as a Highland fling, and normally he does not speak in anything approaching hip-hop patois.But a love ofblack cul-ture is the original cornerstone ofhis friendship with Daniel, and Bruce still likes to black it up.And because, right now, Bruce doesn’t happen to know any black people personally, saying“bro”and talking about Satchel Paige and Miles Davis, Chester Himes, HowlingWolf, AntonioVargas, Peaches and Herb, Sonny Rollins, Sonny Liston, Sonny BoyWilliamson, and all the other black Sonnys, is something he saves for his occasional meetings with Daniel.
Except for a few years inAlbany, where he went to medical school,
Bruce has never lived outside ofLeyden.He is a part ofa thriving med-ical group, but his personal life is conducted at the very pinnacle ofcir-cumspection—no one has any idea what he does when the sun goes down, ifhe drinks, or sits alone watching television, or whether or not he has a lover, and what the gender ofthat lover might be.Even Daniel, who loves Bruce, cannot say what the mysterious doctor has devised for getting through the nights.
“Why are you walking around like that?”Bruce asks Daniel, standing in front ofthe luncheonette, with a half- eaten tuna sandwich in one hand and a paper napkin in the other.
“Exercising,”says Daniel.
”You can’t get exercise walking around like that, man.You want exercise? I’ll teach you the greatest ofthe white man’s sports.”
With that in mind, Bruce convinces Daniel to meet after work at Marlowe College, where Bruce is going to teach Daniel how to play squash.
It’s Friday;Hampton is coming back to town, and Daniel is grateful for the diversion, the company.Rather than go home and get his Nikes, shorts, and aT-shirt, Daniel buys all these things new and arrives at the gym a few minutes before his five o’clock date with Bruce.He immedi-ately goes to the glass wall overlooking the college’s swimming pool, an immense turquoise parallelogram surrounded by red and white tiles—Iris is a swimmer and Daniel is hoping that luck is on his side.
But the pool is empty.An elderly man, probably a professor, with an enormous bald head, ears as large as fists, a barrel chest from which fur rises up in fifty separate geysers, sits in a wheelchair at the edge ofthe pool, grimacing at a young man with light olive skin and shoulder-length hair, probably his physical therapist.The sight ofthe old man fills Daniel’s heart with urgency:time passes, bodies decay, every day spent without love is lost forever, the time cannot be recaptured or made up for.The professor’s legs are as thin as a child’s.He wraps his trembling, chim-panzee arms around the young man’s neck and allows himself to be hoisted out ofthe chair and lowered into the deep end ofthe pool, just to the left ofthe double-decker diving boards.As soon as the old man is in the water, he disappears, and Daniel for a moment thinks he is the wit-ness to a tragedy.But then the old man emerges;he has swum to the cen-ter ofthe pool, and he continues to propel himself with breast strokes, expelling water from his mouth in a long arcing spew.
Bruce arrives, and Daniel follows him into the locker room.In the large, windowless room, with its industrial gray carpeting and the smell ofsweat and chlorine in the air, a dozen or so college students are in var-ious states ofundress.Their movements are nervous, they dress hur-riedly, with elaborate bashfulness about their young, fit bodies, slipping into their shorts while they keep a towel wrapped around their midsec-tions, showering in their bathing suits.The older men, the guys in their fifties and sixties, display without shame their deteriorated bodies, their flaccid bellies, hunched backs, saggy asses, and flamboyantly uneven testicular sacs.
“Did you hear the news about those kids who broke out ofStar of Bethlehem?”Bruce asks.
“What happened?”Daniel cannot hear any mention ofthem without a feeling ofanxiety and remorse.
“Fucking crime spree, baby.All up and down the river.”Bruce smiles, shakes his head, it’s hard to say ifhe means to be rueful or admiring.
“I guess they’ll catch them sooner or later,”Daniel says.
”I wouldn’t bet on it.Cops up here are not used to anyone giving them any resistance.”
Daniel and Bruce begin to undress and Bruce asks the inevitable question:“Where were you during the storm?”
“Actually, I was trapped in someone else’s house for the first day ofit.”
“Oh my God, I would hate that,”Bruce says.He tosses his loafers into the locker.
Daniel glances around the locker room to see ifanyone is within earshot.Several lockers to the right, a skinny, gloomy-looking man in his late fifties, breathing heavily, bathed in sweat, unfastens a complicated knee brace.
“I was at Iris Davenport’s house.I ended up spending the night there.”
Daniel has promised himself never to mention this, but now he can’t quite recall why it’s so important to keep the secrecy intact.
“Iris Davenport?What a fox.She looks a little likeWhitney Houston, don’t you think?”
“Not really.”
“She’s been to my office.Confidentially? I tested her for glaucoma.It runs in her family.”
“When?”
“Months ago.She’s a pretty girl,”Bruce says in a distant voice, as ifhe were piecing together his memory ofher as he speaks.“Her eyes are fine, by the way.”
“Yes,”says Daniel.“I could walk into her eyes and never come back.”
Bruce glances away, clears his throat.“Whatever,”he says.Then he adds,“What’s she like, anyhow? I found her
