David Gates - A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me

“I warn you,” he said, “I’m a hard sell.” He saw Angela looking at them from across the table.

“I’ll sell you,” she said.

He sat in the back of her classroom among the undergraduates, who had stared at him when he came in, and listened as she lectured.

“ ‘Begin, and cease, and then again begin, / With tremulous cadence slow’? I mean, what does this sound like, boys and girls?” Her black T-shirt fit so snugly that he could see the nipples of her small, unbound breasts.

“Intriguing,” he said afterward, when they’d ordered their drinks. “But weren’t you taking things somewhat out of context?”

“What is context?” She took off her narrow black-framed glasses and cleaned the lenses with the bottom of her T-shirt.

“Ah. Am I guilty of old thinking?”

“It’s charming,” she said. “It’s so old it’s transgressive.”

“Then that’s a good thing, yes?”

“I have an idea you don’t transgress enough.”

“You might be surprised,” he said.

She put the glasses back on, and her face seemed prettier again. “Oh, I don’t mean that . Of course, you do have a reputation.”

“Have I?”

“Or else I wouldn’t be here with you. I like a woman-hater every once in a while. It might be fun to take your cherry.”

“Well,” he said. “If you think you’re man enough.”

—

There had been an ice storm the night before he was to go in for the last, most difficult extractions; he scraped away frost to look out the window and saw the bare trees silvery with sunlight. Apparently he had brought wood in last night, a kindness for which he was grateful to himself. He opened the draft and built up a fire. His skin felt raw, as if he had a low-grade fever.

He swallowed a Dilaudid with his coffee and turned on the radio, to a secret station he had found: “music” that was simply noises and drumbeats, about guns and money and women, and where even an old man, provided he was by himself, was allowed to listen in on all the rich obscenity. Bitches on their knees, black men chanting about what the bitches must do.

He heard the bell ring and turned the radio off. When he opened the door, he felt the cruel air and saw Karen, in her black leather jacket.

“It’s cozy in here,” she said, stepping inside. She unwrapped her red scarf, unzipped the jacket. A pretty and delicate young woman—a gamine, she would once have been called—with short black hair.

“Could I get you some coffee?”

“Maybe I’d better take it along? We should allow some extra time because of the roads. If fact, can we take your Jeep down to my car? The path is all ice.”

“I still don’t think it’s necessary for anyone to drive me.”

“They’re going to put you under,” she said. “This is not discussable.”

He’d tried to research the interaction of Dilaudid and Pentothal. Not ideal, but probably all right. “Why don’t I drive us there at least,” he said. Her little Japanese putt-putt had only rear-wheel drive. “And you can drink your coffee. Can you drive a standard shift? Assuming it becomes necessary.”

“All dykes can drive standard,” she said. “It’s in our DNA.”

At the stop sign, he put on his turn signal to take the shortcut and crept down Breakneck Hill Road in first gear, steering from one patch of sand to another. His quietude was deepening now; the ice had bent the trees on either side, making the road a tunnel. When they came to the curve, he felt the Jeep become a heavy object gliding down, its back end sweeping to the left, and heard Karen yell “Shit!” But then the tires bit into sand, he cut the wheel and the Jeep straightened out and resumed its crawl. In his old life, his heart would have begun pounding now in a delayed adrenaline reaction. He looked over and saw Karen using a Kleenex to mop coffee off the leg of her jeans.

In the waiting room, she sat next to him, a paperback copy of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat in her lap. “You know, I never got around to reading that,” he said.

“This is what made me want to go into neurology,” she said. “I have to say, I’m loathing it this time. All this bogus compassion . And his bogus beard.”

“Since when have you been so fierce?”

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m just in a shitty mood. Let’s worry about you .”

“Ah, that’s a young man’s game. And what are you in a shitty mood about?”

“About half the time,” she said. “See? You’re not the only one who can be evasive.”

—

As instructed, he had gone without breakfast; coming up out of the anesthesia, he vomited bile. On the drive back out of town, Karen pulled into the quilted-metal diner on the bypass and helped him up the three steps. Really no need: they were dotted with ice-melting pellets, and he felt remarkably normal, considering the morning he’d had.

Karen ate an omelette while he drank coffee and studied the map of Greece on his place mat: a country in the shape of a splatter. Islands called the Sporades? He had never heard of them. Must this not be where “sporadic” came from?

“You sure you don’t want some rice pudding?” she said. “You wouldn’t have to chew. You should eat something.”

He shook his head.

“Here, at least take my jelly. You need to get your blood sugar up. We have apple or—let’s see. Grape.”

“Ah. The Puritan or the Mediterranean. This will tell you something about me.” He peeled back the seal on the tiny oblong tub and picked up his spoon. “Out, vile jelly!” It tasted sweet, but not particularly of apple. He swallowed without letting it linger in his mouth; he still didn’t dare feel with his tongue where the teeth had been. “Martine and I were going to spend the summer in Crete.”

“Do you know this is the first time I’ve heard you say her name?”

He put down his spoon. “Do you know,” he said, “that you have a gift for making yourself offensive?”

“Donald, why are you being so ugly to me?”

“Perhaps that’s my gift,” he said.

Back in the passenger seat, the inside of the Jeep looked familiar but reversed, like a mirror world. Karen waited for a Sleepy’s truck to pass, then pulled into traffic. “Listen, I want you to stay down at the house tonight. Gloria and I can take the guest room.” She meant Claudia’s room; Nathan’s had been redone as a study for Martine.

“Absolutely not,” he said.

“Then I’ll bring a sleeping bag up.”

“This is foolish. I—Watch out!”

“I see him.” She hit the horn as a minivan seemed to be nosing into them from the left lane. “You don’t even have a phone up there.”

“For what purpose?” he said.

“I’ll let you think about that.” She shifted down to pass the Sleepy’s truck. “God, I want one of these,” she said. “It makes me feel like a real lezzie.”

“Do you consider yourself not a real lesbian?”

“Well.” She looked in the rearview mirror and swung back in front of the truck. “I’ve been with men. It’s not the same.”

“ I’ve been with men,” he said, “if it comes to that.”

“You?”

“Well. A man. I found it pretty much the same.”

“When was this?”

“Oh, back when I was willing to try anything.” He had told Karen only that he’d been beaten and robbed.

“So,” she said, “this must explain why our bath salts keep running low. I was picturing you splashing around with some loose woman.”

“That’s a distasteful picture.” What they’d done to his mouth was beginning to hurt. “Listen, I need to fill this prescription they gave me. I don’t suppose you’d go into Rite Aid for me?” Little chance that they might accuse Kaspar Hauser of impersonating Donald Blakey to fill a prescription for codeine, but nevertheless.