The Book of Skulls

“I bestow her upon you,” said Timothy magnificently. The grand seigneur, making a lordly gesture. “I can’t let my friends walk around in a state of frustration and unrequited longing. Tomorrow at eight, her place. I’ll tell her to expect you.”

“It seems like a cheat,” I said, growing morose. ‘Too easy. Unreal.”

“Don’t be an ass. Accept it as vicarious experience. Like going to the movies, only more intimate.”

“And more tactile,” said Ned.

“I think you’re putting me on,” I told Timothy.

“Scout’s honor! She’s yours!”

He began describing Margo’s preferences in bed, her special erogenous zones, the little signals they used. I caught the spirit of the thing, flew high and higher, got myself into a laughter trip, began capping Timothy’s graphic descriptions with scabrous fantasies of my own. Of course, when I crashed an hour or two later I was certain Timothy had been putting me on, and that tumbled me into a dark abyss. For I had always been convinced that the Margos of this world are not for me. The Timothys would fuck their way through whole brigades of Margos, but I would have never a one. In truth I worshiped her from afar. The prototypical shikse, the flower of Aryan womanhood, slim and long-legged, two inches taller than 1 am (it seems so much more, when the girl is taller than you!), silky golden hair, sly blue eyes, upturned button nose, wide agile lips. A strong girl, a lively girl, a star basketball player (Oliver himself respected her abilities on the court), an outstanding scholar, a wry and supple wit: why, she was frightening, numbingly perfect, one of those flawless female creatures that our aristocracy spawns in such multitudes, born to rule serenely over country estates or to prance with poodles down Second Avenue. Margo for me? My sweaty hairy body to cover hers? My stubbly cheek to rub against her satiny skin? Yes, and frogs would couple with comets. To Margo I must seem something coarse and grubby, the pathetic representative of an inferior species. Any commerce between us would be unnatural, an alloying of silver and brass, a mixing of alabaster and charcoal. I dismissed the whole project from my mind. But at lunch Timothy reminded me of my date. It’s impossible, I said, giving him six swift excuses — study, a paper due, a difficult translation, and so forth. He swept my feeble temporizings aside. Report to her apartment at eight, he said. I felt a wave of terror. “I can’t,” I insisted. “You’re prostituting her, Timothy. What am I supposed to do, walk in, unzip my fly, jump on top? There’s no way it would work out. You can’t make a fantasy come true just by waving your magic wand.” Timothy shrugged.

I assumed that the matter was ended. Oliver had basketball practice that night. Ned went to the movies. About half past seven Timothy excused himself. Library work, he said, see you at ten. I was alone in the apartment we shared. Unsuspecting. Busied myself with my paper. At eight a key turning in the door; Margo entered; a ravishing smile, molten gold. For me, panic, consternation. “Timothy here?” she asked, casually locking the door behind her. Thunder in my chest. “Library,” I blurted. “Back at ten.” No place to hide for me. Margo pouted. “I was sure I’d find him here. Well, it’s his tough luck. Are you very busy, Eli?” A sparkling blue-eyed wink. She draped herself serenely on the couch.

“I’ve been doing this paper,” I said. “On the irregular forms of the verb to—”

“How fascinating! Would you like to smoke?”

I understood. They had set it up. A conspiracy to make me happy, whether I liked it or not. I felt patronized, used, mocked. Should I order her to leave? No, schmendrick, don’t be dumb. She’s yours for two hours. To hell with the moral frills. The end justifies the means. Here’s your chance and you won’t get another. I swaggered toward the couch. Eli, swaggering, yes! She had two fat joints, professionally rolled. Coolly she lit one, pulled deep, handed it to me; my wrist shook, I nearly jabbed the burning end of the joint into her arm in my tremor as I took it from her. Raw stuff; I coughed; she patted my back. Schlemihl. Schlep. She inhaled and flashed her eyebrows in an “oh, wow!” at me. The pot did nothing for me at all, though; I was too tense, and the adrenalin in me burned away the effect before it could take hold. I was conscious of the reek of my perspiration. Rapidly the stick was down to a roach. Margo, already looking stoned, proffered the other one. I shook my head. “Later,” I said.

She rose and prowled around the room. “It’s awfully hot in here, don’t you think?” What a cliche number! A clever girl like Margo could have been capable of better. She stretched. Yawned. She was wearing tight white hip- huggers and a skimpy top, flat tawny midriff bare. No bra, no panties, obviously: the little hummocks of her nipples were visible, and the slacks, clinging skintight to her round, small buttocks, revealed no telltale underwear creases. Ah, Eli, you observant devil, you suave and skillful manipulator of womanflesh! “So hot in here,” she said, stony- dreamy. Off with the top. Favoring me with an innocent smile, as if to say: we’re all old friends, we don’t need to fret about silly taboos, why should tits be more sacred than elbows? Her breasts were medium-big, full, high, marvelously firm, undoubtedly the most successful breasts I had ever seen. I sought ways of looking at them without seeming to. At the movies it’s easier; you don’t have an I-thou relationship with what’s happening on screen. She began an astrology rap, trying to put me at ease, I suppose. Much stuff about the conjunction of planets in the so-and-so house. I could only jabber in response. Smoothly she glided into palm reading: that was her new bag, the mysteries of the crevices. “The gypsies mostly rip the public off,” she said seriously, “but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some substance to the basic idea. You see, your whole future life is programed into the DNA molecules, and they govern the patterns of the palm of your hand. Here, let me have a look.” Taking my hand, drawing me down next to her on the couch. How idiotic I felt, practically a male virgin in my attitude if not in actual experiential qualifications, needing to be coaxed into the obyious. Margo bent low over my palm, tickling me. .“This, you see, that’s the life line — oh, it’s long, it’s very long!” I sneaked convert glances at her headlights while she did her palmistry number. “And this,” she said, “that’s the mount of Venus. You see this line angling in here? It tells me that you’re a man of powerful passions but that you restrain them, you repress a lot. Isn’t that so?” All right. Ill play your game, Margo. My arm suddenly around her shoulders, my hand groping for_%her breasts. “Oh, yes, Eli, yes, yes!” Hamming it up. A clinch; a smeary kiss. Her lips were parted and I did the expected. But I felt no passions, powerful or otherwise. All this seemed formal, a minuet, something programed from outside; I couldn’t relate to it, to the whole idea of making it with Margo. Unreal, unreal, unreal. Even when she slithered free of me and dropped the hip-huggers, revealing sharp hipbones, taut boyish buttocks, tight off-yellow curls, I felt no desire. She smiled at me, beckoned, invited me. For her this was no more apocalyptic than a handshake, a peck on the cheek. For me the galaxies upheaved. How easy it should have been for me. Drop the pants, get on her, inside her, move the hips, oh ah oh ah, hey wow groovy! But I suffered from sex-in-the-head; I was too preoccupied with the notion of Margo as unattainable symbol of perfection to realize that Margo was very much attainable and not even all that perfect — pale scar of appendectomy; faint stretch marks on her hips, the terminal moraines of a much chunkier preadolescent girl; thighs a shade too thin.

So I blew it. Yes, I stripped, and yes, we scampered to the bed, and yes, I couldn’t get it up, and yes, Margo helped me, and at last libido triumphed over mortification and I became properly stiff and throbbing, and then, wild bull of the pampas, I flung myself at her, clawing, grappling, frightening her with my ferocity, practically raping her, only to have the wick soften at the critical instant of insertion, and then — oh, yes, blunder upon blunder, gauch-erie upon gaucherie, Margo alternately terrified and amused and solicitous, until at last came consummation, followed almost Instantly by eruption, followed by chasms of self-contempt and craters of revulsion. I couldn’t bear to look at her. I rolled free, hid in the pillows, reviled myself, reviled Timothy, reviled D. H. Lawrence. “Can I help you?” Margo asked, stroking my sweaty back. “Please go,” I said. “Please. And don’t say anything to anyone.” But of course she did. They all knew. My clumsiness, my absurd incompetence, my seven varieties of ambiguity culminating eventually in seven species of impotence. Eli the schmeggege, blowing his big chance with the grooviest wench he’ll ever touch. Another in his long series of lovingly crafted fiascos. And we might have had another here, slogging through cactusville to ultimate disappointment, and the three of them might well have said, at the end of our trek, “Well, what else should we have expected from Eli?” But the skullhouse was there.

The pathway wound up a gentle grade, taking us through ever more dense thickets of cholla and mesquite, until, abruptly, we came to a broad sandy clearing. From left to right stretched a series of black basalt skulls, similar to the one we had seen farther back but much smaller, about the size of basketballs, set in the sand at intervals of perhaps twenty inches. On the far side of the row of skulls, some fifty yards beyond, we saw the House of Skulls crouching like a sphinx in the desert: a fairly large one-story building, flattopped, with coarse yellow-brown stucco walls. Seven columns of white stone decorated its windowless facade. The effect was one of stark simplicity, broken only by the frieze running along the pediment: skulls in low relief, presenting their left profiles. Sunken cheeks, hollow nostrils, huge round eyes. The mouths gaped wide in grisly grins. The large sharp teeth, carefully delineated, seemed poised for a fierce snap. And the tongues — ah, a truly sinister touch, skulls with tongues! —