“Ever smoked one of these before?” said someone.
“What is it?” said Nat.
“ ‘What is it?’ Who are you, Inspector Gadget?”
Nat didn’t remember anything after that.
He awoke in the night with someone breathing against his ear.
“You’re pretty cute.”
“Izzie?”
“Bzzzz.”
“Grace?”
“Boinggg.” She slipped her hand inside his shirt; no, he wasn’t wearing a shirt.
He sat up; no, tried to. “Where are we?”
“Home is the hunter.”
Her hand moved lower. He might not have been wearing pants either. Her hand, so different from Patti’s hand; knew exactly what it was doing, for one thing. Nat thought that moment of the conga drummer’s hands, a mixed-up thought that went away. He put his hand on hers to stop her.
“How did we get here?”
“Public transportation, like good little citizens. You gave up your seat to a transvestite. Tres galant.”
Surely she was making that up. “What time is it?”
“Night.”
“I think I lost my watch.”
“You talk too much.” She put her mouth on his, got her hand free, down between his legs.
Nat turned his head away. “I really can’t, Grace.”
“Different opinion down here.”
Nat tried to see her in the dark, couldn’t. “It’s not that,” he said. “We don’t know each other.”
“I know you.”
“I meant we don’t know each other well enough.”
“If everyone waited for well enough, we’d be extinct.”
Nat laughed. “I know, but-”
“But what?”
“I have this-I have a girlfriend.”
Grace stopped what she was doing. “At school?”
“Inverness, you mean?”
“What other school do you go to?”
“No,” Nat said, “she’s not at Inverness.”
Grace started up again. “Still on the prairie, then. What’s her name?”
“Patti. And there’s no prairie.”
“Let me guess-she spells it with an i. When do we meet her?”
Nat pulled her hand away, sat up, succeeded in sitting up this time, felt dizzy and a little sick. “Yes,” he said, “she does spell it with an i.”
His voice sounded strange to him: harsh and maybe even powerful. Powerful. Was this the immensely strong effect he’d experienced at the dance club, still with him from the champagne? He felt Grace moving away, heard her stand up.
“What convenient morals you have, Grandma,” she said.
“Convenient?”
She snorted. “Playing dumb’s not you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
But was he really surprised when she said: “No? What would you be doing right now if it was Izzie in your bed?” He was not.
He said nothing.
Grace said: “Piss on that,” and left the room.
Nat lay back down. Was it just that he saw Izzie as the underdog and had always been one of those rooters for underdogs? How could someone like Izzie possibly be called an underdog? Was it instead some crazy competitive thing, that Izzie wasn’t available and Grace was? Or simply that he was a little afraid of Grace?
He closed his eyes, thought about returning to Inverness in the morning, even-but just for a moment-of going home. The steps outlined themselves in his mind: packing, paying Albert what he owed for the gift wine, finding the bus station. He slid down into sleep, and was almost there when it hit him that he’d forgotten all about his hundred foul shots, the first day he’d missed since he’d begun in fifth grade. His eyes opened wide. He remembered the basketball hoop on the deck down below, thought about getting up. Thought about it, but stayed where he was, eyes open.
8
“The degree and kind of a man’s sexuality reaches up into the topmost summit of his spirit.” In a single paragraph, discuss whether Nietzsche would have said the same for women; if so, why; if not, why not?
Christmas morning.
Early morning: Nat was the only one up in the Zorns’ apartment; at least, he saw or heard no one else. Showered, shaved, dressed, packed, left $30 on his bedside table for Albert, with a note giving his college address in case the wine had cost more-$2,500!-he waited for the elevator. And while he waited, faced the Renoir.
A pink nude-not really pink, since he could see silver, yellow, violet, red, even blue on her skin, but the effect was pink-a pink nude, one foot resting on the edge of a bathtub, bending to towel herself dry. She was fat, but didn’t behave-if the word could be used for a painted figure frozen on canvas-the way fat women did now. Au contraire, as Grace or Izzie would probably say, she seemed confident, even liked her body, if that wasn’t reading too much into it. The problem, and the reason he didn’t like the painting-not liking a Renoir, who did he think he was? — was that he couldn’t see anything else inside her but that self-satisfaction. Women he knew, his mom, Patti, Grace, Izzie, might not feel that self-satisfaction-he was almost sure that none of them did feel it, despite the fact that they all had better bodies than Renoir’s woman-but there was something important in all of them that she seemed to lack. Was there a word for that something? What was it? An angle? A viewpoint? Or-here came an image-the habit of mind of a chess player forced always to play the black pieces, to go second? Nat didn’t know, but he sensed this something in women, wanted to know more about it, didn’t see it here. Did that mean that Renoir hadn’t known much about women? Nat, shying away from that conclusion, was about to move a little closer to the painting in order to examine the pink lady’s eyes and see where he had gone wrong when the elevator opened behind him. He turned.
Mrs. Zorn stepped out. She wore running shoes, black tights, and, despite the cold, a black midriff-baring top. And, despite the cold, she was sweating. A long and serious run: Nat could tell from the line of caked salt running like a blurred thread around her black top. There was a blurriness in her eyes too, but they cleared as soon as she saw him.
“You’re up early,” she said. “Nat.”
“Not as early as you, Mrs. Zorn,” he said, his voice sounding a little hoarse in his ears. “Merry Christmas.”
She nodded; her gaze rested on his backpack. “Going somewhere?”
“Inverness.”
Mrs. Zorn blinked, a long slow blink, much like his mom’s. This surprised him. With her flawless skin, high
