The New Yorker Stories

When I got to the bedroom, Ned was trying to pry Richard’s fingers off the door frame. He was having no luck, and looked at me with an expression that had become familiar: fear, with an undercurrent of intense fatigue.

Richard’s robe dangled from his bony shoulders. He was so wet that I thought at first he might have blundered into the shower. He looked in my direction but didn’t register my presence. Then he sagged against Ned, who began to walk him slowly in the direction of the bed.

“It’s cold,” Richard said. “Why isn’t there any heat?”

“We keep the thermostat at eighty,” Ned said wearily. “You just need to get under the covers.”

“Is that Hattie over there?”

“It’s me,” I said. “Ned is trying to get you into the bed.”

“Rac,” Richard said vaguely. He said to Ned, “Is that my bed?”

“That’s your bed,” Ned said. “You’ll be warm if you get into bed, Richard.”

I came up beside Richard and patted his back, and walked around and sat on the edge of the bed, trying to coax him forward. Ned was right: it was dizzyingly hot in the apartment. I got up and turned back the covers, smoothing the contour sheet. Ned kept Richard’s hand, but turned to face him as he took one step backward, closer to the bed. The two of us pantomimed our pleasure at the bed’s desirability. Richard began to walk toward it, licking his lips.

“I’ll get you some water,” I said.

“Water,” Richard said. “I thought we were on a ship. I thought the bathroom was an inside cabin with no window. I can’t be where there’s no way to see the sky.”

Ned was punching depth back into Richard’s pillows. Then he made a fist and punched the center of the bed. “All aboard the S.S. Fucking A,” he said.

It got a fake laugh out of me as I turned into the kitchen, but Richard only began to whisper urgently about the claustrophobia he’d experienced in the bathroom. Finally he did get back in his bed and immediately fell asleep. Half an hour later, still well before dawn, Ned repeated Richard’s whisperings to me as if they were his own. Though Ned and I were very different people, our ability to imagine Richard’s suffering united us. We were sitting in wooden chairs we’d pulled away from the dining-room table to put by the window so Ned could smoke. His cigarette smoke curled out the window.

“Ever been to Mardi Gras?” he said.

“New Orleans,” I said, “but never Mardi Gras.”

“They use strings of beads for barter,” he said. “People stand up on the balconies in the French Quarter— women as well as men, sometimes—and they holler down for people in the crowd to flash ’em: you give them a thrill, they toss down their beads. The more you show, the more you win. Then you can walk around with all your necklaces and everybody will know you’re real foxy. Real cool. You do a bump-and-grind, you can get the good ole boys—the men, that is—and the transvestites all whistling together and throwing down the long necklaces. The real long ones are the ones everybody wants. They’re like having a five-carat-diamond ring.” He opened the window another few inches so he could stub out his cigarette. One-fingered, he flicked it to the ground. Then he lowered the window, not quite pushing it shut. This wasn’t one of Ned’s wild stories; I was sure what he’d just told me was true. Sometimes I thought Ned told me certain stories to titillate me, or perhaps to put me down in some way: to remind me that I was straight and he was gay.

“You know what I did one time?” I said suddenly, deciding to see if I could shock him for once. “When I was having that affair with Harry? One night we were in his apartment—his wife was off in Israel—and he was cooking dinner, and I was going through her jewelry box. There was a pearl necklace in there. I couldn’t figure out how to open the clasp, but finally I realized I could just drop it over my head carefully. When Harry hollered for me, I had all my clothes off and was lying on the rug, in the dark, with my arms at my side. Finally he came after me. He put on the light and saw me, and then he started laughing and sort of dove onto me, and the pearl necklace broke. He raised up and said, ‘What have I done?’ and I said, ‘Harry, it’s your wife’s necklace.’ He didn’t even know she had it. She must not have worn it. So he started cursing, crawling around to pick up the pearls, and I thought, No, if he has it restrung at least I’m going to make sure it won’t be the same length.”

Ned and I turned our heads to see Richard, his robe neatly knotted in front, kneesocks pulled on, his hair slicked back.

“What are you two talking about?” he said.

“Hey, Richard,” Ned said, not managing to disguise his surprise.

“I don’t smell cigarette smoke, do I?” Richard said.

“It’s coming from below,” I said, closing the window.

“We weren’t talking about you,” Ned said. His voice was both kind and wary.

“I didn’t say you were,” Richard said. He looked at me. “May I be included?”

“I was telling him about Harry,” I said. “The story about the pearls.” More and more, it seemed, we were relying on stories.

“I never liked him,” Richard said. He waved a hand toward Ned. “Open that a crack, will you? It’s too hot in here.”

“You already know the story,” I said to Richard, anxious to include him. “You tell Ned the punch line.”

Richard looked at Ned. “She ate them,” he said. “When he wasn’t looking she ate as many as she could.”

“I didn’t want them to fit anymore if she tried to put them over her head,” I said. “I wanted her to know something had happened.”

Richard shook his head, but fondly: a little gesture he gave to indicate that I was interchangeable with some gifted, troublesome child he never had.

“One time, when I was on vacation with Sander, I picked up a trick in Puerto Rico,” Ned said. “We were going at it at this big estate where the guy’s employer lived, and suddenly the guy, the employer, hears something and starts up the stairs. So I ran into the closet—”