Norman Rush - Subtle Bodies

“Crossing the creek.”

“I knew it,” she said, looking meaningfully at Ned. “I told you it was dangerous.”

Nina wanted to give ibuprofen to Hume. She had some in her purse, which was atop the load of their belongings in the wheelbarrow parked on the corner of the porch. She went to get it.

Hume was following her movements and was already shaking his head. She brought a glass of water from the kitchen and tried to hand it to him along with two pills. He rolled his eyes. She rolled hers.

“Now we’ll go up the hill,” Ned said.

It was tense. Ned tried to support Hume, who said that no one should touch him. They let him go on ahead, limping.

“I was completely ineffective,” Ned said quietly to Nina.

“No you were not. But anyway, so was I.”

“It wasn’t up to you, it was up to me.”

She thought, Oh you poor man. He was concluding that he had failed as a father, that it had been a tryout, and he had failed to, what would you call it, improve on Douglas as a father, who had clearly been a dud and miserable at it.

“Now where is he going?” Ned asked. Hume had broken away, taking a path that would lead him around the back of the manse and presumably to some entrance not known to them. There had been no goodbye, unsurprisingly.

Nina said, “You know what you’re doing — you’re chain-sighing, a thing you accuse me of. You make me stop doing that, so you stop. It’s noticeable.”

Hume was gone and she was glad he was gone. She was going to relax now. They had said what they had to say. She was sorry for men. She pitied Hume. Puberty is torture, she thought, depending on where you are when it happens, and who’s around. Ned was sad.

“Where’s your better half?” Joris asked Ned.

“Interior decorating. Rearranging the deck chairs.” Ned looked around the bedroom assigned to Gruen and Joris. “Your digs are identical to ours.”

“Same nice big bed. We have to sleep together, like you guys. Head to toe because I don’t want his cold,” Joris said, pointing at Gruen, who said, “I don’t want it either.”

Ned sat down in an armchair at the foot of the bed. His two friends were lying on the bed a yard apart, under the spread, drinking, their heads on pillows propped directly against the glass of the great window looking into blackness. The rumbling brook below was a presence in the dull room. This wing of four rooms was cantilevered directly over it. There was no reading lamp, only an amber fixture in the ceiling shedding the sort of light he associated with hotel corridors.

Gruen said, “You know I bet those people who lived in what was it called, yeah, the Falling Waters House Frank Lloyd Wright built them moved out in about six months. It was just like this place. I can see the wife saying I’m going mad I tell you, mad .”

“Where did you get the sambuca?” Ned asked. There was a liter bottle of sambuca two-thirds full on the floor next to Joris. They were drinking from paper cups.

“We stole it,” Gruen and Joris said in unison.

Joris said, “And you can’t have any. Yes you can.”

“No thanks,” Ned said.

“Right now we’re lounging,” Gruen said.

“We like it,” Joris said.

Gruen gestured vehemently for Ned to lock the door to the room, or at least that’s what the rotary motions of his right hand seemed to mean.

Ned got up, turned the lock, and resumed his seat.

He said, “For your information, if you don’t aim your bed north/south you’re going to turn into a stunted carrot. Or something. Because you’re thwarting the earth energies that make you big and strong. I just moved our bed.”

“Beg pardon?” Gruen said.

“Nina gets these things from an advanced thinker, her mother. Nina doesn’t believe them but I have to execute anyway.”

Gruen said, “Joris is in the middle of something that will make your hair stand on end. His life in the whore world. He doesn’t care. He is fucking telling all about it. It’s the best fucking story you ever heard. And we don’t want any interruptions.”

“Jesus, what have I missed?” Ned said.

Joris said, “You missed when I was telling about when I first became a whoremonger …”

Ned said, “Well wait a minute. A fishmonger is somebody who sells fish, isn’t it?”

“Oh shut up,” Gruen said.

Joris said, “I have to say this for Douglas. He did make me think behind words. But on that one if you look in the OED you’ll find that a whoremonger is somebody just like me, who goes to whores. I’ll tell you, a pretty amazing moment was when I figured out that your highness meant your way-up-aboveness in physical space and nothing else. Also Douglas pointed out that revolution doesn’t mean the most pissed-on rising to the top forever, it means one more turn of the wheel, turn the crank and revolve the oppressors. Also exclusive neighborhoods is funny. It means exclude poor smelly bastards … and very exclusive neighborhoods means exclude more of them. And the most exclusive neighborhoods means exclude all of them.”

They were all silent for a while, giving Douglas credit, Ned understood.

“I decided I had to go to a therapist to find out what it was with me and married women and also to see if one would have anything persuasive against the way I was going to whores. I was liking it. I mean, it made me happy. The first shrink I went to seemed a little too interested in making me get married again. He’s divorced now.”

Weirdly, Gruen sang out, in a clear voice, “Tournent, tournent, mes personnages …” and then stopped. Joris repeated it. That was the intro music from supposedly the greatest movie of all time, La Ronde . They’d seen it three times at Douglas’s insistence, to get its essence.

There was more about the brothel world that Joris inhabited. Ned tried not to feel sordid at the close attention he was paying and he thought it made him look bad to ask for elucidations so he didn’t. There were nineteen women in an extremely comfortable six-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side. There was turnover, but not substantial, and some of the women were permanent fixtures and had developed long-term relationships with certain men. It was all middle class, clean, the madam was a wonderful cook. If a girl used drugs she was through. Two doctors were clients. They supervised the health of the women, who accepted the protocol that spot checks for either drugs or STDs would happen at random times.

Joris’s narrative was a lumpy arc. He was going back repeating some things he’d already described to Gruen. He was saying that he’d never gotten to the bottom of his fetish, if that was what it was, for other men’s wives. And he was saying that he couldn’t tell anyone about his personal life, because he had no friends. He had business associates but no friends. He had acquaintances but no friends. And he said that probably the nature of his personal life made him wary about the idea of friends. He didn’t know.

Gruen said, “Wait. I have no friends either!”

Ned laughed. “It doesn’t seem to bother you that much.”

Gruen drained his cup and said, “I don’t think it does. I’m busy.”

Now Joris was going back over his preliminary study of the whorehouse possibilities in Manhattan. Ned didn’t need to be convinced that every variety of sexual taste would find its supplier in a big city and he was already convinced that there was no accounting for tastes. He was glad that Joris had found a comfortable bordello.

Everything that Joris had to say about whores was fascinating. There was a whole lore there, no rhyme intended. Gruen was maintaining himself in an abnormally still state lest any inadvertent move derail Joris’s revelations. The brothel women, the older ones, naturally, resented the pressure to present young , as they called it, and they particularly disliked the whole new waxing imperative. The pressure went beyond that. There were mothers among the women, and more of them were getting half-zips, vaginal tightening. On the other hand, there was an older john constituency for natural escutcheons, the bigger and thicker the better, and some felt uncomfortable or self-conscious with partners so much younger than they were, and chose the oldest of the women. And there was a new house specialty, participatory labial shaving, that some johns were willing to pay a premium for. Condoms were mandatory. Joris swore that he had never had an STD. It was collegial in the brothel, although there was some rivalry, Joris had to admit, over his attentions. There were four or five women who were very happy to see Joris step into the place. He had accommodations at the brothel, minimal, to use when he felt like it — a bed and informal office space. He dispensed legal advice gratis from time to time, helpful to them despite the fact that they were not seagoing vessels. The talent, which was what Joris sometimes referred to the women as, used diaphragms to prevent bleeding when they had their periods. His wife had done that, too. And so had Nina, Ned thought. Men had their preferences. An occasional one was for the talent to put on eyeglasses, and there was one client who paid extra, now and then, to have any of the women who were free come into the room he was using and applaud as he approached his orgasm. There would be cheers and gratuities all around.