Norman Rush - Subtle Bodies

“Talk about Claire,” Joris said.

Ned said, “The situation was that Douglas dropped Claire and she was in bad shape when she came to Cal and we found each other. And we stayed together for a few years and I heard from Douglas through the usual group communiqués, but he never said a word about Claire. And I felt like I didn’t have any reason to bring it up either. So anyway, I finished my master’s on the decline and fall of the ejido collective in Mexico. I liked Mexico but I couldn’t stand to be there for long. I couldn’t see teaching. So I worked with the co-ops in the Bay Area. And then got into Fair Trade. Which I do now. Claire traveled a lot. She was in a recorder consort the whole time. She got tenure at Mills College. She traveled both to perform and teach. Anyway, she traveled for her business and I traveled for mine.”

“I like what you do for a living,” Joris said.

“I like it too.” Ned felt like saying thanks. “About Claire, seven years seems like a long time. But the substance of living together kept getting thinner. She was so beautiful that I never got over that she was mine, even if what I had was really a shrinking percentage of her. Go to a party and people would still stop talking when she came into the room and shift around so they could keep looking in her direction.”

All the friends had had serious girlfriends at college, at one time or another. And Claire’s liaison with Douglas had been almost a marriage. They had been aiming, all of them, at the sublime of work, the sublime of love, the sublime of deeply comprehending the world. It had been essential not to be a fool in any of those departments. And it had looked like Douglas had landed the love-sublime ahead of everybody, with Claire.

Ned went on, “Then she and I had run our course. And since Claire I’ve been with Nina. Married for the last three years.” He paused. “So now Claire lives with a woman in Sonoma County. Her partner is an art photographer, and also commercial. She does high fashion, local celebrities, and so on. Her work is collected. Museums buy her stuff. In fact she did a gallery show with lots of nude studies of Claire in it. We got an invitation. I didn’t go. Nina went.”

Joris grimaced. He said, “We all loved Claire. She must be bi. That’s stupid, what else would she be? And … financially. I hope you don’t mind if I ask. How did it come out?”

“Fine. We never married. She always earned. And her partner is rich.”

Ned thought, The impulse is to tell the story of your life to a friend, so you know what the story is … Nina knows a lot … but you edit. She’s sensitive.

He felt tired. He hoped that was enough to say. Joris said something to himself. Then there was silence.

They brought up the subject of Hume at the same time. Ned let Joris go first. “I don’t know what Douglas was thinking, with this boy. He always wanted him to be a joker, like he wanted us to be the Marx Brothers. Why? When Hume was little, Douglas got him the Johnson Smith Catalog and every birthday said to him to spend a hundred dollars, two hundred, whatever he liked … the boy is very wild. But hell, nothing we can do that I can think of. He has a mother … tomorrow we can talk about your wife, maybe.”

“After breakfast,” Ned said.

It was all right. Ned turned the lantern off. He would lower himself into sleep down a ladder of thoughts of Nina, his honey monkey. He would imagine he was hearing somebody singing “Ombra mai fu.” He liked opera, thanks to Nina and not the patrician Claire, he might add. He believed Nina liked opera and Kurosawa movies for the same reason, they were all out . Nina was small but not really petite, and very brunette, next to Claire, whose yellow hair was so fine it looked luminous. Claire treated her breasts like blisters, you had to be so gentle. But Nina would play with you, and she might say, Okay, you can feel me up, but only one breast, take your pick. Yes, and the time Claire had stared coldly at him when he’d cupped her breast and pushed her nipple with his thumb-tip and asked Is the missus home? Terrible violation. Undo me, Nina knew how to say in a way that made his hair stand up. With Claire never anything even close.

I need to live forever, Ned thought.

“I don’t know why we’re here,” Ned said to Gruen as they stood in the living room, waiting for the sliding doors to the formal dining room to open and reveal the sumptuous breakfast they all expected. Preparations were still in progress. Premium coffee was plainly going to be on the menu.

“She’s going to tell us why we’re here,” Gruen said. He was medicated. The day was warm and everyone had gotten into jeans and sport shirts. Joris’s shirt was tucked in. He was showing off a little. He was the only one of them in short sleeves. He had been a little late in joining them to wait for breakfast, delayed by his push-up regimen and whatever else he did without fail.

At the end of the sofa was a woven African basket the size of a washtub containing a midden of scholarly quarterlies, most still in their mailing sleeves. Ned thought, After NYU we were supposed to keep up with the quarterlies because they represented a worthy stream of thought nobody was paying much attention to. He had tried, in a sampling way, until the branch libraries in Contra Costa County had stopped letting periodicals circulate, meaning readers would have to sit in a chair at the library and fit the experience into the ever-shrinking hours the library was open. And then the subscription list had dwindled down to the Sewanee Review . Vandalism had been the announced reason for cutting back on periodicals, something he had difficulty imagining applied to the Explicator or Celtic Studies .

Gruen asked, “Got any water on you?” which was not exactly a normal question. Gruen had a pill bottle in his hand which he rattled in explanation. Just then the doors slid open.

It was indeed another feast. Places were set around an exaggerated refectory table. Iva was in black. She was at the head of the table. Elliot was directing two women servers, new people, older women. Elliot was wearing a black business suit. He was scheduled to meet with the authorities. Joris made some effort to secure the seat on Iva’s right.

Iva was repaired. She seemed calm. All the food was hot. There were warming panels in use. Ned’s scrambled eggs were hot. Even the tomato and scallion garnish was hot. Ned sat down next to Gruen, mid-table. There were four or five media people present, to whom he hadn’t been introduced.

“Don’t miss the mushroom thing,” Gruen said.

Ned realized that Iva was looking with some intensity at him. A strong and unwelcome feeling came over him. It was the conviction that he could help this woman, that the accidents of his life had peculiarly qualified him to help her in her sadness. It was unsettling.

Ned concentrated on eating. He thought that these might really be the best scrambled eggs he’d ever had. It couldn’t be just the fines herbes because Nina used them routinely on eggs. Nina loved food but she didn’t like to cook, which wasn’t that unusual. Unexpectedly, Iva rapped on the table.

She said, “I don’t know how I can thank you for coming so quickly here … as you can see I am lost. Here.”

Ned wanted to kill Gruen, who was taking a large second portion of eggs for himself but doing it with an excruciating slowness intended to make what he was doing less obvious. Part of the maneuver was to keep his eyes fixed on Iva while his arm worked independently like an animal for which he had no responsibility.

Iva said, “I present myself to you.

“I must do something.

“My life is black …”