Robert Parker - The Widening Gyre

"Hard booze?" Paul said.

I nodded. "Want a sniff?" I said.

"Sure."

I poured a little for him, over ice. He sipped it and didn't look completely pleased.

"Is it worse than drinking nothing?" I said.

"No."

I put the dishes into the dishwasher and wiped off the counter. We went into the living room with two glasses and the whiskey and some ice.

"Since when have you been drinking hard booze?" Paul said.

"It's come to seem soothing lately."

Paul nodded. "One of those all-hour convenience stores will probably be open," Paul said. "I could run out and get some sliced turkey roll and a loaf of Wonder bread. Maybe a quart of Tab, for the festive board."

"We'll eat out," I said. "The hotels are usually open. The Ritz, maybe." I drank some whiskey. When you've been nursing it out of a bottle neck, a glass and ice seems like being on the wagon. "I thought you were bringing a girl friend."

"Paige, yeah. I was. But her parents got bent out of shape, so she went home."

There was a fire laid in the cold fireplace. It saved time in case I met someone who wanted to jump on my bones in front of a romantic fire. I'd gotten this one ready in August. No sense wasting it. I got up and lit it and sat back down and watched the flames enlarge. The hell with romance.

I drank some more whiskey. Paul nursed his. I knew he didn't like it. My glass was empty. I added more whiskey. An ice cube.

"Susan still in Washington?" Paul said.

"Yes."

"Couldn't get back for Thanksgiving?"

"Nope."

"I'm surprised you didn't go down."

I nodded.

"Where is it she's at?"

"Children's Hospital National Medical Center," I said. " One Eleven Michigan Avenue, North West, Washington, D.C., 20010."

"Internship?"

"Yes. Pre-doctoral internship." I leaned forward and poured a little whiskey into Paul's glass. The kindling was fully flamed and the larger hardwood logs were beginning to burn. I stared at the flames as they flickered over the wood. Matter is neither created nor destroyed. E = mc2.

"She quit being a guidance teacher?"

I nodded. "Actually took a leave, but she's not likely to go back. Not with a Harvard Ph.D. in psychology."

"You mind?" Paul said.

"Her quitting guidance?"

"The whole thing," Paul said. "Ph.D., internship, off to Washington, not around for Thanksgiving. You mind that?"

I got up and walked to the window and looked down into Marlborough Street. It was bone empty. "Susan is doing something very important to her," I said. "She needs to do this, to strive, to seek, and not to yield."

The holiday desolation of the empty street was depressing. In the streetlights' shine it was manifestly silent. Over the hills and through the woods to grandmother's house we go.

Paul said, "Yeah, but do you mind?"

I drank some more whiskey. "Yes," I said.

"How come you didn't go down for Thanksgiving dinner with her? She have to work?"

"No. She's spending it in Bethesda with the head of her intern program. It's important to her." I kept staring out the window.

"More important than being with you?"

"There's other times," I said.

A cab came up the empty street and stopped on the other side. An old woman in a fur coat got out carrying a fat white cat. The cabbie pulled away and she walked up the dark steps to her door and fumbled at the lock and then went in.

"If you had something you were working on, you'd stay away on Thanksgiving," Paul said.

"I know."

"If I'd gotten a chance to dance, like at Lincoln Center or something, I'd have gone. I wouldn't have come here."

"Sure," I said. My glass was empty. I went and got the bottle and poured some more. I filled it before I remembered the ice. Too late. I sipped some neatly. Paul was watching me. A grown face, not a kid. Older maybe than eighteen because of the psychological experience he'd had and overcome.

"You went off to Europe without her in 1976."

"Yes." My voice was hoarse. More whiskey, relax the larynx. Good thing I hadn't used ice. Throat needed to be warmed.

"It's killing you, isn't it?"

"I want her with me," I said, "and more than that, I want her to want to be with me."

Paul got up and walked over and stood beside me at the window and looked out. "Empty," he said.

I nodded.

He said, "We both know where I was when you found me, and we know what you did. It gives me rights that other people don't have."

I nodded.

"I'm going to hurt you too," he said. "We're the only ones that can, me and Susan. And inevitably I'll do it too."

"Can't be helped," I said.

"No." Paul said. "It can't. What's happened to you is that you've left Susan inside, and you've let me inside. Before us you were invulnerable. You were compassionate but safe, you understand? You could set those standards for your own behavior and if other people didn't meet those standards it was their loss, but your integrity was…"- he thought for a minute-"… intact. You weren't disappointed. You didn't expect much from other people and were content with the Tightness of yourself."

I leaned my forehead against the cold window glass. I was drunk.

"And now?" I said.

"And now," Paul said, "you've fucked it up. You love Susan and you love me."

I nodded with my forehead still against the window. "And the Tightness of myself is no longer enough."

"Yes," Paul said. He took a large swallow of whiskey. "You were complete, and now you're not. It makes you doubt yourself. It makes you wonder if you were ever right. You've operated on instinct and the conviction that your instincts would be right. But if you were wrong, maybe your instincts were wrong. It's not just missing Susan that's busting your chops."

" 'Margaret, are you grieving,' " I said, " 'over Golden-grove unleaving?' "

"Who's that?" Paul said.

" Hopkins," I said. "Gerard Manley Hopkins."

"There's a better one from The Great Gatsby," Paul said. "The part just before he's shot, about losing the old warm world…"

" 'Paid a high price for living too long with a single dream,' " I said.

"That's the one," Paul said.

It was the Monday after Thanksgiving, Paul was back at Sarah Lawrence College. I was back in my one-room office with a view of the art director on the corner of Berkeley and Boylston. It was 9:15 a.m. and I was reading the Globe and drinking some coffee. Today was the day I would have only two cups. I drank the last of the first one when my office door opened and Vinnie Morris came in. Behind him came a large blank-faced guy with a hairline that started just above his eyebrows.

Vinnie was my age, a good-looking guy with a thick black mustache and his hair cut sort of longish over the ears. He was wearing a black continental-cut suit and a white shirt with a white tie. His camel's hair coat was unbelted and hung open and the fringed ends of a white silk scarf showed against the dark suit. He had on black gloves. The big guy behind him wore a plaid overcoat, and a navy watch cap on the back of his head like a yarmulke. His nose was thick, and there was a lot of scar tissue around his eyes.

"Vinnie," I said.

Vinnie nodded, took off his gloves, put them together, and placed them on the top of my desk. He sat in my office chair. His large companion stayed by the door.

"You got any coffee?" Vinnie said to me.

"Nope, just finished a cup I brought with me."

Vinnie nodded. "Ed, go get us two coffees," Vinnie said. "Both black."

"Hey, Vinnie," Ed said. "I ain't no errand boy."

Vinnie turned his head and looked at him. Ed's septum had been deviated enough so he had trouble breathing through it. I could hear the faint whistle it made.

"Two black," Ed said.

"Large," I said.