bands bought that day in Hermes. His father shoots his cuffs with a slight, habitual gesture and turns to the mirror. The room is filled with the scent of his lotion, Zizanie, which comes in cool aluminum bottles. Only his luggage seems worn.

“Jacquette is going to be there, you haven’t met him. And Yeli Ezoum.” He unrolls names like a splendid carpet.

“I can’t tonight,” Dean says.

“What is it, a girl? Let me see you. You look a little drawn.”

“There isn’t any girl.”

“We’re going to the Vert Bocage.”

Dean is silent. Desperation is making him weak.

“Now, Phillip,” his father says, “come on. This is really like climbing a ladder. Let’s go up one rung at a time. First, why can’t you join us for dinner?”

“Please. I can’t.”

“I see.”

“I really need to borrow some money.” It seems too abrupt.

“Oh, that’s about four or five rungs farther up.”

“Seriously…”

“Call me tomorrow,” his father says, “and we’ll have lunch.”

“Tomorrow…”

“All right?”

“But I need it now,” Dean pleads. He is praying.

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

“That’s too late,” he says stubbornly.

“Oh, come now,” his father makes it seem foolish. He is brushing the sleeves of his jacket. “Don’t become so absolutely tedious. Here,” and from his wallet he takes out three hundred francs.

“Now, why is it you can’t come to dinner?”

For a moment Dean thinks crazily of bringing her along. Her clothes are so cheap though. The leather of her shoes is cracked. It would be awful. They would greet her with indulgent smiles, ask little questions.

“I really can’t,” he says.

When he gets back, finally, he finds her asleep. He lifts the edge of the covers. She is naked. He pulls off his shoes and undresses. He lies down beside her, and she rolls into his arms. Seven in the evening. The noise from the streets drifts upwards. The soft hours of early night. He reaches for the pack of preservatifs on the telephone stand, but she takes hold of his wrist.

“You don’t need to,” she says.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He is overwhelmed. As his prick goes into her, he discovers the world. He knows the source of numbers, the path of the stars. Music pouring over them from somewhere, ah, from her white plastic radio. She’s put a hand towel beneath her, and it becomes bloody. He finds it later. He packs it secretly when they leave.

On Sunday they walk the bridges and sometime in the early afternoon, leave town.

That night he tells me about it, not everything, of course. I’m so happy to see him, to have him confiding in me, that I miss a lot. He’s worn out from the drive. In the street, dark as a ship’s hull, the car is parked. The engine is still warm. Beneath the chilled body there’s a faint cracking, as of joints. In the house we sit shivering. The walls are like steel. We go down to the Foy for some hot tea and cognac. By this time he’s talking of other things—where to eat cheaply—I don’t remember. I am hardly listening. I hear only enough to keep track of what he’s saying while my real thoughts circle around us like hungry dogs.

[10]

WHAT HAD HAPPENED? THEY had gone off and made love. That isn’t so rare. One must expect to encounter it. It’s nothing but a sweet accident, perhaps just the end of illusion. In a sense one can say it’s harmless, but why, then, beneath everything does one feel so apart? Isolated. Murderous, even.

In a way I could calmly expect that from this point they would begin, having discovered all there was so soon, to lose interest in each other, to grow cold, but these acts are sometimes merely an introduction—in the great, carnal duets I think they must often be—and I search for the exact ciphers which serve to open it all as if for a safe combination. I rearrange events and make up phrases to reveal how the first innocence changed into long Sunday mornings, the bells filling the air, pillows jammed under her belly, her marvelous behind high in the daylight. Dean slowly inserts himself, deep as a sword wound.

I prefer not to think about it, I turn away, but it’s impossible to control these dreams. The forbidden ones are incandescent—they burn through resolutions like cloth. I cannot stop them even if I want to. I cannot make them vanish. They are brighter than the day that surrounds me. I am weary from it. I have become a somnambulist. My own life suddenly seems nothing, an old costume, a collection of rags, and I walk, I breathe to the rhythm of his which is stronger than mine. The world is all changed. The scabs of reality are picked away and beneath them, though I try not to see, are visions which cause me to tremble.

In her room they are warming their hands at the heater. She’s tired. Her work that day was hard. He undresses her, a little awkwardly, for she is still far from being his—one can imagine her still refusing—and puts her to bed. Above the thick quilt her face shines like a child’s. He stands looking at her, filled with contentment. They say nothing. He adjusts the covers, which are somewhat soiled, smooths them down. Then hurriedly, as an afterthought, he takes off his clothes and slips in beside her. An act which threatens us all. The town is silent around them. On the milk-white faces of the clock the hands, in unison, jerk to new positions. The trains are running on time. Along the empty streets, yellow headlights of a car occasionally pass and bells mark the hours, the quarters, the halves. With a touch like flowers, she is gently tracing the base of his cock, driven by now all the way into her, touching his balls, and beginning to writhe slowly beneath him in a sort of obedient rebellion while in his own dream he rises a little and defines the moist rim of her cunt with his finger, and as he does, he comes like a bull. They remain close for a long time, still without talking. It is these exchanges which cement them, that is the terrible thing. These atrocities induce them towards love.

I hear him come in. I am reading. I appear to be. Henry the Fourth is beautifying Paris, building the Place Royale, the Pont-Neuf. I keep going over the same lines again and again. I can tell what has happened, but I cannot bring myself to say anything. Nothing. I am possessed of nothing but phrases as heavy as logs.

[11]

IT IS ALL IN fragments, like the half of a paper napkin—for a time in the top drawer of his bureau—on which they both had written words. There are two columns, and I can see they were added to alternately, like a game. His is on the left. It begins with Croix de Fer. Opposite, in her hand: Les Martiens. He writes Les Escaliers. She writes Le Select. They are naming a hotel, the one they will have together someday. Dean can get the money, he says—his father knows everybody. His father has rich friends. The list continues:

Pharaoh Napoleon
Les Copains
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