Norman Rush - Subtle Bodies

She wouldn’t mind visiting this place again, when it was less like a saturated sponge, say in a hot June or July, with her offspring along. Maybe two offsprings. She reminded herself to do some research on baby carriers.

She pushed Ned’s hand down into her crotch. She just wanted his hand present, nothing more. He knew that. He was sensitive. She didn’t believe in healing touch or any of that, but his hand on her neck was definitely analgesic sometimes, if she had a headache. She was lubricating. She pulled his hand up and gave it back to him.

Some things are pleasant, she thought. She was thinking of the rustic moon bridge that would take them back onto the estate proper. It crossed the brook that spilled into the gorge where Douglas had met his death. Other brooks fed into it lower down.

She saw something else she thought was pleasant. Across the lawn she could make out Gruen and Joris strolling, their arms across one another’s shoulders. It was bonhomie pure and simple. Her impression was that they had been drinking, but still it was pleasant to see.

He loved it when she lubricated. He hadn’t been trying to get there but it had happened and it was nice and he loved her sweetmeats …

An inner alarm went off. Sweetmeats had been his term for Claire’s labia, and it was one thing she hadn’t objected to when he said it although she’d had a strict list of things never to say during sex, a rather comprehensive list. He had never said sweetmeats to Nina and if he introduced the word she would know like an arrow that it was something from his time with another woman, and she would know it was Claire and she would hate it. It wasn’t exactly like calling out a former lover’s name during intercourse but it was in the vicinity. Labia, the little devils, were like nothing else on the outside of the body. He could use any endearments he felt like with crazy Nina, his Soft Gem.

Ned said, “Let’s be sure to get to the mess hall before they run out of frankfurters.”

Nina said, “It’s impossible to get hold of Elliot to talk. He’s never around. And when he’s around he’s always slipping off.” Nina was lingering on the moon bridge and it was making Ned nervous. The infrastructure around this place seemed to need attention anywhere you looked. He motioned her to join him on the other side and she did.

Ned said, “Well, I can tell you something historical about Elliot and his disappearances but my guess is you won’t think it’s funny. It has to do with flatulence and only men think flatulence is comical.”

“Okay get it overwith.”

“When we were all rooming together on Second Avenue it became evident that Elliot had a flatulence problem and he was sensitive about it. He would leave the room for no particular reason we knew of until we figured out what it was. He was sparing us. We witnessed a mortifying thing at a party in a ballroom in Midtown when Elliot slipped off and discreetly farted, away from the crowd, into a column of drapes, safely, he thought, but hiding behind the drapes was a couple kissing and they burst out into the room thinking they’d been the victims of a practical joke. Elliot went to an internist and it got better. I’m just reminiscing. Expressing gas isn’t the explanation for his absences now.”

“They posted the menu, you know. Maybe he’s afraid of the chili.”

“The problem was lactose.”

Dinner wasn’t until seven, so there was time for a nap. Nina seemed not to be interested, saying, “You take a nap. I have some things to do.”

All this was coming to an end. She was a force of nature and there was nothing he was going to try to do about it.

Their paths diverged. He went his way, yawning.

Ned was late getting down to dinner. It was the same mob scene it had become. At first he didn’t see Nina. He joined the tail of the buffet queue. And then he did see her, standing with Joris and Gruen, who seemed to be watching people eat, rather than eating, themselves. Something seemed to be wrong. Both of them were holding capacious wineglasses, half-filled. Joris’s eyes were funny. Nina looked unhappy. She had something to tell him. He hoped she had eaten.

Nina joined him. She’d had dinner. She said Joris and Gruen hadn’t.

Gesturing at the two, she said, “They’re happy , both of them. That’s what my mother called it.”

“Let me get something.”

He filled a plate for himself, concentrating on vegetables. He had no appetite. From a distance, Jacques raised a drumstick to him.

He didn’t like what he was seeing, with his friends, but he didn’t know what he was seeing. He sat down in a chair and ate half of the rice and eggplant mélange he’d taken. Nina wanted him to do something.

She disposed of his plate, and said, “I would like to get them out of here.”

“First, let’s get some coffee.”

She was impatient. “Maybe I can get them to take some coffee outside. I had a struggle getting Joris to leave the bar. Let me see if they’ll go for it. Joris is very upset. Very. The thing is, he’s spoiling for a scene. He’s talking about going home.”

She left for the dessert station and organized four cups of coffee on a tray. They would all go outside. They would walk down to the bridge, whose understructure was being reinforced.

Work was going on at the bridge across the brook on the road up from the Vale. Cables were being wound around the two main stanchions. Watching it happen would be something to do. The workers, four of them, were wet and unhappy. The temperature was dropping. They were cursing the torrent they had to work in and out of. They moderated their language after noticing Nina there. Blindingly bright floodlights illuminated the scene.

Nina pushed two empty tool chests together to make seating. Joris definitely needed to sit down. In adolescence Nina had been told she was hypoglycemic and she had gotten into the habit of carrying backup snacks around with her, tight little foil packets of nuts, cheeses, crackers, dried fruits. Her condition had gone away but the habit of arming herself against potential gaps in the availability of appropriate food had persisted. Just in general, she always seemed to have needful things with her, like aspirin or Neo-Synephrine. Nina had succeeded in inducing Joris to finish one of the tall paper cups of coffee she had secured for them and now he was eating a roll, in a gingerly way, but eating it. Joris and Nina had their backs to the glare of the work lights. What Ned wanted to do at that moment was say something to Nina like I would always like to be what I am now, with you .

Gruen wanted a word aside with Ned. Together they stepped away from the lights.

Gruen said, “Joris wants to go home. I talked to him, but he still wants to. I wouldn’t mind leaving either, but I think we should all be here. You need to talk to him.”

Ned said, “Isn’t there a story called ‘The Runaway Pallbearers’? This isn’t good. He needs to be here, too.”

Ned was having a particularly strong reaction to the idea of Joris leaving. Partly it was selfish because he hadn’t finished the task of putting together what they had all been, with what they were now. And the question was still there of whether their true interior selves — the subtle bodies inside — were still there and functioning despite what age and accident and force of circumstance may have done to hurt them. He meant something like that … that when they had become friends it had been a friendship established between subtle bodies , by which he meant the ingredients of what they were to be …

He was succeeding in being confused by his thoughts and feeling strongly about them at the same time. This was about what you loved in a friend as a friend. He loved something in Elliot, still. Maybe there was a window in life and then it closed. Nina was asking him if he was all right. He wasn’t, because none of this could be said, really. But there was that window, before anybody had accomplished anything to speak of, when the ingredients , by which he meant the subtle bodies, shone their light. Douglas was only the first of the friends to die. Everything connected with him was foreclosed now, Ned thought. But there are four of us left, and if this is too mystical fuck it … I sound like Ma and Ma sounds like Madame Blavatsky … but so mote it be and fuck it.