Rafael Yglesias - Hide Fox, and All After

They talked the rest of the night, sleeping toward dawn. Carefully Raul had babied Alec through it: assuring him that it was nothing, saving his ego. It’s settled, Raul thought, finally sleeping. Thank God it’s over. We’ll never see her again.

Danger had been averted only slightly — how could you have slipped like that? Raul chided himself. How silly of you.

He was sleeping on the floor, as he usually did. Fully clothed, he looked uncomfortable. Alec kicked him. Raul woke and looked up. Barbara and Alec were sitting on the bed.

Surprised, he reached for a cigarette, mumbled good morning, and asked, “What are you doing here?”

She smiled pleasantly. “I was staying nearby, so I came back.” She bowed her head. “I was upset last night.”

Raul stood up. Alec moved toward the door, asking, in an unfamiliar voice, “Raul, Barbara, would you like some coffee?”

“I would,” Raul said.

“No, thank you,” Barbara said.

Like a weird dream, Raul invited her to his house, lying to Alec about his motives. But they were unclear — vaguely, this was a chance to lose his virginity. Why? Later, it seemed as if, madly, he had set this up. Against every logical consequence, something or someone in him acted to his and Alec’s worst interest

He wasn’t himself. Smiling boyishly, he led the characters about. Alec off, suspiciously, to work on the stage crew, Barbara going to his house. He watched himself: the silly grin, the boyish glee as he led events on.

Why? Again, against every personal rule, he didn’t question her motives. She was functioning as a symbol — the personification of an abstract.

Stupidly, foolishly, he placed some measure of trust in her. Why? Why had he given up his power? How far he fell, how easily he became the frightened virgin.

He pleaded with her, miserably, using all his tricks of language, to fuck, never asking outright. Cringing fool, whining worm. She looked complacently at him while he said all this. A pouting, fat face, he thought, a benign moronic expression. He hated her for allowing his humiliation.

They necked — as a consolation, he thought. His body, soul, whined like a crushed, dying insect. Alec called. Where was he? He said he’d be at the theater. Was Barbara there? Yes.

He was his friend, Alec said, hanging up. How could he be so treacherous?

After Barbara left, Raul looked fearfully at his capricious acts. He’d lose Alec for an uncomfortable bitch without even the promise of fucking.

He felt lost in a maze of possibilities. How to exploit them? How to act? No, he wouldn’t be willing to give up the chance of sex, despite the animalistic overtones. Yet beyond that, over something so foolish, he would not abandon the glory of art with Alec. The two, it seemed to him, had to be resolved. Alec would surely not be so obstinate: there were hundreds he could fuck.

For four days Alec successfully and impossibly avoided meeting Raul. Raul repeatedly phoned his house, searched for him about the theater, watched with nervous and anguished eyes out of Mike & Gino’s, but he was nowhere to be found.

Alec was staying with Richard, therefore he couldn’t be caught at home. He left the theater early, before Raul was let out of class, and ran past Mike & Gino’s, taking care never to go in. His ego was outraged. He’s on my hunting ground, he thought, and cannot win.

Raul was bewildered and lost. Deserted, he felt wounded and looked about the world with pitiful eyes. It seemed to scorn him as frivolous, as if he had capriciously toyed with a sacred idol.

His feelings toward Barbara grew in anxiety. He hadn’t digested her character: she could be playing any number of games. To allow an invasion of his solitude that would ridicule him made him writhe with the strangest, twisted hate. He had never trusted any human: if they were not false to themselves, they were false to another. He didn’t love her, like her, or even gently admire her: she was repulsive to him.

But the promise of a body, of a release from his icy, frail virginity, was too inviting. He paused, filled with self- disgust, writing his notes. All he could record, his pen limply poised, were two sentences: lose the actor to the minor cunt; intellectualism reels, drunk, to carnal games.

He mentally saw himself as jester, pitiably trying to amuse this fat, pouting queen’s face. Alone, he was riddled with disgust, and he surrounded himself with media, to drown with mindlessness his castigating thoughts.

She couldn’t go to bed with him, she said, while she was having her period. In any case, she had no pills. It would be silly for him to use a prophylactic: it wasn’t a real fuck.

Transparent lies, but his mind blocked them out. His knowledge of human nature turned against him: he tempted what others mildly disliked in him, heightening their distaste. Routine caution with lies was dropped as he made himself more vulnerable.

He returned home on the fourth day, frightened that he really might not see Alec again. The dreary, exhausting day of school, Barbara, Alec, and his self-hate overcame him. He fell on his bed, weeping; clawing in witless, impotent fury at his pillow.

“Galvanize yourself,” he whispered. He tried calling Alec, knowing it to be futile. But Alec answered.

“Ah,” Raul said, “so I have finally reached you.”

“I was staying at Richard’s.”

“I see. Your mother didn’t give you my messages?”

“No, no. She didn’t.”

Raul laughed mildly. “Don’t be angry, Alec.”

“I shouldn’t, eh?”

“No.”

“You want forgiveness? I can’t. I will never forgive you for this.”

“Forgive me for what?” Raul shrieked. “For what? What the fuck did I do wrong?”

“Come on, Raul, you know what you did.”

“What? You think I intentionally took her away from you?”

“Something like that, yes.”

Raul sighed. “All right. Look, I don’t wanna talk about it over the phone. Can you meet me at the Castle before rehearsal?”

Pause. “I’ll meet you in front of the theater after school.”

“However you want to say it.”

Raul arranged to meet Barbara at five, so he had an hour, if he talked Alec into being late for rehearsal, to speak to him. This day passed more quickly, more painlessly, than others: the preoccupation of his mind blurred the boredom.

It was a beautiful, mild spring day, the kind of weather that suited the campus. The calm in the air and the tension within him contrasted sweetly. That fundamental knowledge he always had, but that seemed lost lately, returned. There was a consciousness in the light breezes and in the sorrow he felt that above all this something more precious was to be sought. Often he ironically called this the knowledge of his destiny.

His perspective returned. Alec’s anger was a furious little boy’s; Raul indulged in a terribly human desire. He laughed at him for being childish. How far off he, Raul, had strayed: all that had happened was off the point. The afternoon was only a matter of appeasement.

His quiet smiles came back; the whimsical, confident Raul gave him his objectivity, and his security returned. His camera hovered above him, and like a movie four o’clock came. The great mouth of the school opened and poured out its students; Raul filtered out with this loud mass. He was up the steps, and the rhythm of movement that carried him there halted abruptly as his and Alec’s eyes met.

The world centered between them, as students hurried about, hollering trivia. They said nothing but turned aside, walking away from the school. They walked silently until the noise of the school receded to nothing behind them.

The low whispering of the leaves, the clear, gentle air made Raul content to say nothing. They lit cigarettes, Alec offering his lighter to Raul. Alec asked, “Okay. What is it?”