Fahrvergnügen

Ramsey Was An Irritable Man. It had cost him one wife, and it was going to cost him again, but irritability was something that it looked like Ramsey couldn't give up. You could take, for example, his present circumstances, pacing the shoulder of a sun-blasted road in Kerhonkson, New York, just down from the Texaco station, where his car, only 2000 miles on its $46,000 engine, had stalled and jerked to an unforgiving halt. He could just see its ivory flank if he looked back, but he didn't dare look back; he knew he would feel that bright flare of irritation ($92 a mile, so far, not counting gas or insurance) that had already sparked him into sarcasm with the garage mechanic (Ramsey believed his exact words had been, "There are still three good hours in the working day, you know, even assuming you knock off at four"), resulting, when he asked about a loaner to get home, in a stubborn and you might say (he said) bovine idiocy on the mechanic's face, and a shrug. "No taxi, I'll bet," said Ramsey, his voice sharpening, his eyes rolling.

"Nope," said the mechanic, and Ramsey knew, and he knew that the mechanic knew he knew, that there might or might not be a taxi, but the mechanic would never tell him and, furthermore, the promised repair of his expensive and self-indulgent vehicle would take days and more days--long enough for the defective part to be manufactured by hand and carried to Kerhonkson over earthen tracks by wagon train.

Ramsey's head was burning. Not having foreseen a breakdown, he had forgotten his hat. He kept pressing his finger into his glabrous crown. He couldn't see the mark he was making, but knowing that ever-deepening redness was flowing into the white imprint of his finger, a sure sign of sunburn, got him so irritated that he kept at it, poking his head over and over until he could feel a moonscape of little craters up there.

That, in a nutshell, was Ramsey's problem, and he understood it, though he hadn't ever quite been able to explain it to his wife, his daughter, his present mistress or her daughter, all of whom, he knew, found him more or less insufferable. The problem was his body, the way that it felt everything. He could smell the difference between a rare steak and a medium one, feel the difference between 40 percent polyester and 100 percent cotton, hear dissonance in tones that were harmonious to others. On top of that, as soon as he imagined something, he could feel that, too. He was extraordinarily careful never to read in the newspapers about accidents or injuries.

Ramsey stuck out his thumb. Just under the nail, there was a tiny red mark where a sliver had inserted itself two nights before. As Ramsey looked down the road to see if any cars were coming, the tip of his thumb seemed on fire again. It was strange and irritating, too, to look at it and see just a thumb. No cars came. He opened his shirt. The hair on his chest and back, he thought, had thickened in the past year and now dusted his shoulders, as well. He wouldn't have felt so hot five years, or even a year, before.

The garage mechanic could be seen at the cash register inside the station, smoking a cigarette. Ramsey advanced prudently down the road. There was no telling how he might be further spurred to vent his irritation on the man.

The road skirted a copse of maples, and Ramsey positioned himself in this shade, though the curve obstructed, for oncoming Jaguars, say, or Mercedeses, a good look at his respectability. He stood there. On a Friday afternoon, Kerhonkson was no vortex of activity. Since no one was around, he put both of his hands to his head and smoothed away the craters. He pretended he was rubbing in a nice, cooling aloe-vera gel.

Perhaps as a result of this concentration, he didn't see the VW bus until it had already stopped about ten yards beyond him. At first, he forgot that it had stopped for him, but then an arm arced out of the passenger's window and motioned him forward. In spite of its sausage-like, elderly style, not very safe or comfortable, its blue and white paint job shone in the sunlight so that Ramsey had to shade his eyes. And the rear bumper carried a sticker--War Is Not Healthy For Children And Other Living Things--its blue and yellow sunflower-crisp, unfaded. Ramsey felt a powerful surge. All through the Gulf war, he'd been uniquely irritated, even for him, the way those peace people who had come out of the woodwork hadn't had a single new idea, hadn't even had a single new haircut, in 20 years. He passed the right rear fender, tickticking the glistening paint job with his fingernail. Amazing the way someone had gotten just that VW color in this day and age. Annoying somehow, too. The paint on his own car was guaranteed not to chip or blister in the worst Saharan or arctic conditions. He'd been congratulating himself on that moments before the breakdown. In Newburgh, Ramsey consoled himself, he could rent something he'd prefer--a Caddy if nothing else.

It wasn't so easy getting into these old buses. You had to pull the door in pretty hard, and then it took three tries to make the latch take hold. By the time Ramsey had seated himself on the edge of the homemade bed, he was huffing and puffing from the effort. He looked around. Things were worse than he'd realized. There were two dogs on the bed, staring right at him. There was a bead curtain in the back window. The bucket seat bolted to the floor behind the driver's seat was draped with a length of muslin decorated with peace signs. The copper-colored ponytail of the kid who was driving swayed against the back of his seat as he shifted and the bus strained for second gear. Only the woman's wide and welcoming smile reassured Ramsey. She had promising teeth, large and white. Ramsey preferred that in a woman, because women like that were usually too good-humored to take his moods seriously. She said, "Hey. Been out there long?"

"Long enough."

The man said, "Where you headed?"

One of the dogs turned its gaze away from Ramsey, but only to roll against his leg. The hairy radiator of the dog's body prickled through Ramsey's cotton slacks. He said, "Newburgh will be fine. It's not that far." He tried to sound polite, even though the pressure of the dog seemed to be throbbing in every direction from his leg, suffusing him in heat. The dog opened its mouth and its tongue lolled out, dripping. Ramsey said, "What's the dog's name?"

The woman said, "That's Shantih. The other one's Attila. Shantih had that name when we got her. Isn't that cool? That's exactly what we would have named her."

Ramsey said, "Shantih, down."

The woman said, "She always lies on the bed. That's her spot." And, indeed, it was. The paisley cotton bedspread looked swampy with grime. In the distance, the road climbed out of the broad valley they traveled in and curved into the treetops.

Ramsey introduced his hand between his thigh and the dog and pushed. The dog pushed back. Ramsey licked his lips. He could feel the ever-hot coals of his irritation begin to glow. Shantih bared her teeth. The woman said, "Oh, look. Shantih has a great smile. They don't smile among themselves, you know, just at people." Ramsey pushed again, harder. The dog growled. The woman exclaimed, "See? She's trying to talk, too. She's very people oriented." She turned away, evidently satisfied with Ramsey and Shantih's interaction. Ramsey pushed again, this time fairly violently. Shantih growled with keener resolve. Ramsey looked into the dog's obsidian-black eyes, upside down beside his knee. They came to an understanding. Ramsey removed his hand and put it out of the way, behind himself.

In the front seat, the woman reached across and removed a slender, expertly rolled joint from between the man's lips and put it to her own. A frisson of fear penetrated Ramsey's irritation. Smoking marijuana and driving this unstable, high-center-of-gravity vehicle? No seat belts, either, and certainly only limited insurance coverage. Of course (Ramsey stretched to peer over the driver's shoulder), they were going only 43 miles per hour. The woman's hand, slender, long-fingered, her wrist and her forearm, the skin tan and the hair blonde from the sun, loomed in his face. She said, "Want a hit?"

Ramsey shook his head. She said, "My name's Sun. This is Blues. We named ourselves after our favorite things."

"When did you do that?"

"When time ceased to have meaning for us."

Ramsey said, "Oh, right."

Unfazed by his tone, the woman picked a marijuana seed off her tongue and placed it carefully in a cup on the dashboard, then said, "You in school around here?"

Ramsey thought about what this might mean. There were schools of all kinds in the Hudson Valley, and possibly this girl, in her vividly colored and considerably outdated ensemble, taught at one of them in some capacity. It was Ramsey's experience that academics did wear the same clothes year after year. They took a species of pride in resoling their shoes, patching the elbows of dull-looking tweed jackets and replacing their shirts with new shirts of the same color and style. It was a kind of monastic robe. Ramsey himself was a modish man, though without a modish figure, he had to admit. The only conservative clothes he liked to wear were those aged by others, such as Ralph Lauren. After a moment, he said to the woman, "No, I'm not."

She said, "That's cool. Blues, here, and I swore off that book trip, too. Blues was, like, four credits away from graduating. We just took off."

"When was that?"

"I told you. Time has no meaning for us. You hung up on time?"

Ramsey looked at his watch, an ultrathin Concord that he'd bought himself for Christmas when it looked as if his mistress wasn't going to produce it in spite of his many hints. He said, "You could say that." It was a beautiful watch, and it considerably eased the pain of aging. Sun smiled indulgently at him. She looked maybe 27, and Blues younger than that, his ponytail glossy and thick, boy's hair. And his hairline curved robustly across his brow. Ramsey (continued on page 112)Fahrvergnügen(continued from page 104) suspected that the missed graduation was a recent one, as recent as just this past June. In spite of their old clothes, both Blues and Sun had an apricot blush on their cheeks and a smooth, resilient creaminess to their skin that was not careful preservation but was youth itself.

Blues said, "I might be running from the draft by now. I didn't leave a forwarding address." He shrugged.

"There isn't a draft anymore."

Blues turned and looked at him, full face. He said, "There isn't? Cool!" Then he said to Sun, "There isn't a draft anymore." He sounded satisfied, vindicated more than anything else.

Sun smiled. "Well," she said, "we try not to read newspapers or watch TV anymore, either. It's a statement for life over death."

Ramsey had stopped listening. It was too irritating. He had to watch himself, not let the internal pressure rise too high, push him into betraying his self-interest. Now wasn't the time to burst their little bubble. He reached up and felt his head. Hot to the touch. He would have to remember to buy Lanacane in Newburgh. He thought for the first time in a few minutes of the car. What would these two have thought if he had picked them up in that? The oxblood-leather seats still exhaled that delicious, expensive, animal smell. The nap on the carpenting sprang up fresh and grit-free--he'd vacummed every day with the car vac he'd bought just for the purpose. Kids like these wouldn't know what to do in a car like that. Dogs in the back, on the floor, of course. If he had picked them up, which he wouldn't have. He hadn't picked up a hitchhiker in 20 years.

"What was your major?" Ramsey felt the prick of actual curiosity--his daughter Jeanine was about to apply to college. He had advised her to major in chemistry, but to little effect. According to her mother, comparative literature was in the wind. Just this morning, Ramsey had debated how far he could carry the threat not to pay her tuition before risking her enrollment at the state university. Ramsey himself was in insurance, business insurance. Insurance had been a lucrative career for him, but Jeanine, he thought, he hoped, had real talents. Blues turned fully around, looked squarely at him and drawled, "Chemistry." Beyond his glowing copper head, the road up the mountain jagged to the left. Beyond the guardrail, the mountainside dropped into dizzying violet space. Ramsey inhaled sharply, but the bus hugged the curve. Ramsey said, "Hey, watch your driving."

Blues gave him one of those self-satisfied smiles and said, "OK, man."

"That's a good major," said Ramsey.

"Too linear," said Blues. He turned to Ramsey again, this time beatifically. He said, "Made some great acid, though."

Sun said, "That's how we bought this van. It's practically new. Guy brought it over from West Germany and decided he didn't like it. It's only got ten thousand miles on it. Did you see the D?"

Blues said, "The D is cool." Then he grew loquacious. "The thing was, man, I took this course called Skiing and Being? And what it was was twelve of us at a ski lodge for the winter quarter, and we skied all day, then had philosophy seminars all night, till, like, three and four A.M. Changed my whole life."

"Your parents must have been thrilled. Where was this?"

Nowhere on Jeanine's application list, Ramsey hoped.

Blues didn't answer. Instead, he yawned, gaping sybaritically and closing his eyes for at least half a mile. The moment he opened them, the road switched back and Blues casually spun the wheel.

Ramsey tried again. "Where are you headed?"

Sun said, "Nirvana."

Ramsey sucked in his breath to stifle an exasperated snort. Such shallowness had always annoyed him, though possibly no more than anything else did.

Still, she looked happy to be headed there. When she turned her gaze from Ramsey to Blues, Ramsey saw on her face an unmistakable look of fondness. Love, even. Her thick curls caught between her back and the seat. She thrust her arm beneath them and lifted, revealing for the briefest instant the white of her neck. Ramsey coughed. He felt an unaccustomed expanding feeling, as if he were sorry for them, then realized that he was sorry for them, for all the mistakes they had made and were making. Kids like Jeanine and her friends would definitely ridicule these two, and yet they were friendly and kind in a way that Jeanine and her friends were not. He couldn't imagine Jeanine picking up a hitchhiker. It wasn't only that he and her mother had forbidden her ever to do so, it was also that she would disdain, and possibly fear, someone who had no car.

Sun said, "You been there? It's a macrobiotic kosher restaurant in New Paltz. We work there. Blues always thinks it's good karma to drive hitchhikers, though. We took this one guy all the way to Albany." Blues turned his gaze from the road and they exchanged a long and, in Ramsey's view, complacent look.

Soon they were whispering. He tried not to notice. Attila the dog had moved closer and begun licking his hand. Ramsey put the hand in his lap. Suddenly, Attila set his paws on Ramsey's shoulder and began licking the back of his neck. The dog had a sticky, warm tongue, and the saliva trickling beneath the collar of his shirt seemed to erode a meaty, slimy rut down his spine. He jerked forward and yelled, "Ecch! Stop that! Yech." He gave an involuntary shiver of revulsion.

Blues said, "Down, Attila. He doesn't like you."

"I like him fine," said Ramsey, not wishing to offend a dog named Attila. "But down is fine, too. You know, it's a mistake to give up on something like a chemistry major right at the end like that. Starting salaries--"

Sun interrupted him. She said, "Wanna ball?"

Ramsey said, "A ball?"

Sun said, "Wanna ball? Wanna make it?"

Ramsey considered himself an experienced and manly man. In fact, for many years, he had excelled at the one-night stand, both at making the connection and at breaking it. He had grown more cautious in recent years, but most women were lamentably irritating over the long haul. Their little habits and quirks tended to accumulate; however, he liked them otherwise. With Jeanine's mother, he had made a concerted effort, but she'd driven him crazy after two years. He'd driven her crazy after six months. His present mistress, Eloise, was remarkably accommodating, but the tread was wearing thin. It grieved him, but the grief only swelled his irritation.

At the same time, Sun, here, was young, and Blues, who had removed his shirt just now by taking his hands entirely off the wheel and pulling it dangerously over his head, was obviously in his well-muscled prime. Gazing at the two of them, Ramsey knew himself: bald, sunburned, middle-aged, hirsute, paunchy, wrinkled around the knees and droopy around the jowls.

"Don't be nervous," she said. "Blues doesn't mind."

"Sun's her own person," said Blues. (continued on page 196)Fahrvergnügen(continued from page 112) "That's why her name's Sun."

Sun said, "I'll come back there." She gestured at the bed.

Ramsey said, "What about the dogs?"

"They don't mind, either." She swung her foot over the hump of the engine well and torpedoed at him.

He said, "How far is it to Newburgh?"

"We've got plenty of time." Now she was beside him, and the fact was, her odor, compounded of sandalwood and a fresh citrusy scent that smelled like youth itself, drove away thoughts of safe sex. He took a deep breath, then another one. She slid her hand into his shirt and began to run her palm back and forth across his nipples, then down over the swell of his paunch. It seemed to be an affectionate gesture, and he had another of those unaccustomed feelings, this one of gratitude. His dick began to harden. Nevertheless, he wrapped his fingers around her wrist and removed her hand. She said, "Hey, don't worry. It's fun. There's this thing called tantric yoga? It's like this sex religion. That's what Blues and I believe in." She said this in a low, seductive but girlish voice that Ramsey found sadly appealing.

He said, "How long have you believed in it?"

"Why are you so uptight about time? It's not a very becoming quality."

She unbuckled the 18-kt.-gold band of his Concord. He watched as she put it into the little sink beside the bed, distantly aware that this could well be the point of his adventure. That watch was worth plenty. But he let it be taken. Then she unbuttoned his shirt, undid his woven Polo belt, pulled her own gauzy cotton blouse over her head. Her breasts, set wide apart, seemed to float. The nipples, with their dusky areolae, pointed forward like headlights. Ramsey very much wanted to touch them. He could feel that precise desire tingle in his finger tips, as well as in his dick, as well as in the center of his forehead, where a certain spot always burned when he was aroused.

Sun said, "Hmmmm." Or "Ommm." Ramsey was beginning to feel a little dizzy. The back of Blues' head radiated a nimbus in the afternoon sun. How late was it, then? The bus puttered upward, the trees passing to either side like water.

But, to be honest, there was something else. Even while Ramsey began to nuzzle those breasts, and then the barely detectable pale down on the smooth curve of Sun's belly, he knew that the obstreperous dick in his pants that had never left him alone before this would certainly betray him now. She kneeled over him, for he was lying back, and he ran his finger tips down the sides of her neck, from her ear lobes to her upper arms. The contours there were majestic and mysterious, way beyond anatomical. It would be better for him to stick to this--to deeply felt appreciation.

But then she was poking into his pants, finding the betrayer, believing its braggadocian promise.

Ramsey then began to pant a little, nothing embarrassing.

The dog Shantih flopped her head between them and looked him in the eye. Sun kissed the animal on top of the head.

The fact was, Ramsey would probably be able to perform well enough. Even after two years with Eloise, he didn't fail at that. He could get it hard, keep it hard and fuck as long as ever. It was himself who was betrayed, because there wasn't any pop anymore. No matter how grand the build-up, no matter how energetically Eloise performed her part just so, his orgasm ran out like water left in the garden hose, more pissing than coming, not much worth the effort and certainly not worth the maddening anticipation that suckered him almost every time. But being here, with Sun, so young and willing, reminded him forcibly that it all had once been very different, with orgasms that were, well, religious. He wanted to shout to the back of Blues' shining head that tantric yoga was the yoga that didn't last. The religion of chemistry would serve him better in the end.

Sun kissed him on the lips, suddenly hiding other considerations from his gaze with her mantle of dark hair. Kissing aroused him. It always did, and the Great Betrayer bucked out of his underwear and into the breeze like a chimp pounding its chest. Sun's thighs made a V above it, and it jumped toward her, full of beans and vainglory. Ramsey could feel the road unroll this way and that beneath his back, and it was the strangest, and maybe the most knitted-together, feeling he had ever had in a car.

Ramsey was beginning to relax, beginning to accept whatever might happen, when the trees opened out at the top of the mountain and Blues stopped for a stop sign, then turned right. The road sloped downward and away. Ramsey could feel the brakes catch and loosen and catch again--it broke the spell. He clasped Sun firmly by the shoulders and moved her to one side, then sat up.

She said, "Hey, man, what's wrong? I was just getting off on this."

Did she sound petulant? If so, Ramsey's own petulance rose to meet hers.

But then, in a slower, more honeyed tone, she said, "Hey. Are you still afraid?" She looked at him speculatively, then said, "OK. You know, I didn't ask you your name. That was pretty rude."

"It's Bill."

"I bet your friends call you Billy."

"Not many of them."

She smiled, apparently amused by this reply, then smoothed his cheek with her hand. "How old are you, Billy?"

Now, here was an irritating question for which Ramsey could think of myriad snappish replies. He said, "How old do you think?"

Sun shrugged. They were speeding along again, so to speak, dropping down the mountain, and she suddenly pushed him backward with a butt of her shoulder, then she started kissing him with soft ferocity, tongue lips tongue teeth. He felt her cool finger tips on the Great Betrayer, which had as yet shown no scruples, and suddenly he was inside her. She crooned, "I think you're trying to look eighteen, but my guess is you aren't sixteen yet," and Ramsey came. He came so hard that in his gaze, Sun's face blacked out and disappeared. He came so hard that he forgot to wonder whether she had come, so hard that he might as well never have fucked anyone before in his life.

When Ramsey next knew himself, he saw they were on not the Newburgh bridge but the Tappan Zee, almost to Tarrytown. He did not remember sleeping but the bus had gotten magically far. Ramsey quickly transformed his exclamation into a cough. Sun was back in the front seat, taking her hair down and pinning it up again by twisting it around a knitting needle. He put his hand on the peace-sign-covered bucket seat and levered himself back onto the bed. Blues said, "Hey, man. You cool?"

"I guess so," said Ramsey. They crossed the bridge. Eloise lived off Sleepy Hollow Road, so there was no reason to stop and rent a car. Ramsey wiped the sweat off his face with his shirt, then buttoned same. Two buttons, genuine bone, imported from Switzerland, were missing. Another one was broken in half. He pushed it through the hole and put on his watch. Sun said, "You sure you want to look at that thing all the time?"

Ramsey said, "No."

Sun gave him her warm, amused smile. The bus turned down Eloise's road. He could see her mailbox 50 yards off, with its three decorative cattails. He said, "You can drop me there. Number sixty-four." And then the sliding door creaked and banged, and then he was out, and Sun and Blues shouted for him to stay cool, Shantih and Attila barked an enthusiastic chorus, then the shining blue-and-white bus was 20 yards away, too far for him to make out the license plate. It was yellow, he could tell that. And then, as a single westering beam of sunlight struck it, burning it almost gold, while the dogs were still barking and Blues was still waving, the bus disappeared with a silent pop, like a soap bubble, leaving a glittering scatter of bright particles floating in the air.

There were some things, Ramsey decided after a bit, that it was fruitless to question. You just had to accept them.

Eloise's driveway was more of a lane, with feathery grass growing between the wheel ruts. It dipped and then swung upward, around an ancient clump of luxuriant and fiery tiger lilies. Ramsey felt his cheeks with the backs of his hands, checking for fever. Cool and damp. He quickly pulled out the front of his shirt and dipped his nose for a whiff. Not bad. He smelled his hands. Just him. No revealing traces of sandalwood and citrus. Ramsey realized he had been walking quickly, too quickly, at a pace that could bring him into Eloise's presence before he was ready. He stopped and leaned against the fragrant bark of a black-cherry tree.

All he had to do was claim it. That was all. That was all. That was all.

He claimed it. He turned his head and smelled the bark of the tree, its sweet velvet redolence. It swirled through his flesh like cream through coffee and soothed him. He monitored his extremities--pate, thumbs, feet. All was quiet. Ramsey felt himself smile.

Kay, Eloise's daughter, stood on the flagstone patio, watering a big pot of red-and-green coleus. When she caught sight of Ramsey, she dropped the hose and snatched it up again. Ramsey heard the distinct clink of the nozzle against the flagstones. Jeanine had once told him that Kay probably didn't like him because her parents had divorced when she was 11, a bad age. Now Kay was 13. Ramsey didn't know whether Kay liked him, but most of the time, she acted more or less politely. Until now, that had been plenty. As Ramsey approached, she gave him a formal smile, said, "Hi," then shouted, "Mo-o-om!" She shoved the nozzle of the hose into the next pot and mumbled in his direction, "I guess I've got some other chores. See ya."

"Kay?" he called out. He was still smiling. He wished he had a present for her; she was a cute girl.

Eloise stepped through the French doors, wiping her hands on her shorts. She did smile at Ramsey, and he had to scratch behind his ear to keep himself from running toward her. He didn't want to run. He was too short and overweight to look good running. But Eloise looked great, distracted and pretty. "Hey," he said, "did I ever give Kay a present?"

"I don't think so," said Eloise. "What are you doing here? I thought you were going up to Oneonta."

"I want to give Kay a present. What does she want?"

Eloise shrugged, and Ramsey pressed himself toward her. She gave him a hug.

"It's almost dinnertime. Let's have some lobsters for dinner. I'll go down to the Grand Union."

She looked past him. "Where's your car?"

"Broke down in Kerhonkson. I'll get some of those French breads, too. The baguettes. We can dip--"

Eloise sniffed, always a sign of resistance. Ramsey could take that if he had to. She said, "We ate. We didn't expect you."

"Well, I'm starving. What time is it? It's only seven. Why did you eat already?"

"I'm going to take Kay to Arachnophobia."

"Do it tomorrow night." He knew as he said it that he should have made that a suggestion, or a request, but he was suddenly finding himself in an ordering mood.

"I promised. She invited Annie. We're just about to leave."

"Goddamn you." Apparently, the day's events hadn't changed him as much as he had thought.

Eloise's lips disappeared as if by magic, and white flecks appeared in her green eyes. She said, "I've had it, Ramsey. That's it for us."

"Wait a minute--"

She looked at her watch. "I've got to leave, or I'd stay to kick you out." She turned.

"I don't have a car!"

"Call a cab."

"I'm dirty, I--"

"All of that's your problem now. I'm so tired of you, I can't even remember how this got started." She charged through the French doors, calling, "Kay! Kay! Time to go!" Then she stopped and spun to face him. "I mean it."

Ramsey had heard her use that tone to Kay. He had liked it when she used it, because it was a tone that Kay never challenged, not even by rolling her eyes. Ramsey licked his lips, then turned and began to walk back down the lane. He stepped aside without looking when they passed him in Eloise's Camry wagon.

But when she was gone, Ramsey ran back up the driveway and scuttled into the house. Dried sweat covered him like a shell and he had to shower. He knew for a fact that there was a clean shirt of his in Eloise's closet. The pants he could stand. After that, he would leave. He swore to himself he would leave.

But he didn't. Instead, he put on Eloise's terrycloth bathrobe and sat on one of the big white-duckcloth sofas in her study, watching the darkness gather outside the French doors. Water from Kay's hose had spilled over the rim of the flowerpot and onto the stones of the patio. A shimmering sheet ran into the grass. Ramsey was annoyed enough not to get up and turn off the outside faucet. But an undergrowth of conflicting feelings burgeoned as well.

There was envy for Blues, that poor sap, a fool with a body and a grace that Ramsey had never had, young or old. Ramsey thought Blues could, and certainly did, look at Sun with desire and will unmuddied by self-consciousness.

There was love for Sun, yes, at this safe remove, love, desire, longing, the sort of thing he'd felt in college at UCLA, on beaches, in parking lots, in cafés, something that always, for him, came before sex, but this one time came after, making him want to cry (what an embarrassment that was).

As separate from him, now, as they were, was a picture of his former self, the wrong sort for UCLA, for all of the West, where he had been born and raised, sweaty, dark, hairy, anxious, fast-talking, always divvying any group check down to the penny, following friends out to the street, even, saying, "You still owe me seven cents," or, maybe worse, pressing the seven cents he still owed on the unwilling recipient. Adult life had seen Ramsey's victory--the clothes, the accessories, the car, his move to the East, where he was recognized and welcomed. Guys like Blues were nobodies now, driving Ford Escorts these days, no longer attractive to women like Sun. Victory; defeat: Sitting in the dark in Eloise's study, where he wasn't supposed to be, it all hurt.

He heard the front door open and the noise of Kay hustling up to her room, two steps at a time. Water began to rush through the pipes. It took Eloise a long time to get to the study. In the interval, Ramsey changed his spot, so that the wedge of light from the door would fall immediately upon him, and his presence wouldn't surprise and frighten her.

The knob turned. The door creaked. Eloise stared, and then said, "What the hell--"

"I was so sweaty, I--"

"God, Ramsey, I don't think I ever want to hear about your body again. Just get something on. I'll call a cab."

"I wish you'd sit down."

"For what?"

"We can talk."

"All you ever talk about is complaints. Your complaints. I used to think you were letting me get close to you, but you just complain. I'm tired of it."

"I won't complain."

She paused in the doorway, then went in, striding quickly to the couch where Ramsey had been sitting.

Except that he couldn't really tell her about his day.

He thought of something. "Have you been to that restaurant in New Paltz? The Nirvana or something like that?"

"Not in a while." She pursed her lips. "It burned to the ground eighteen or twenty years ago."

Ramsey felt his eyebrows climb. He lowered them. He would think about that part later.

They sat.

Eloise began to fidget. Her legs had been crossed, but suddenly she uncrossed them and her feet fell like brake shoes to the hardwood floor. She began to stand up. "Well--"

"Wait a minute."

"For what?"

Ramsey kneaded his brain for something to say that wasn't a complaint, wasn't about Sun.

Eloise sat up. "Just tell me one thing you've ever done with anyone else in mind. One thing. One good thing." She spoke rhetorically, already knowing there had been nothing.

As for Ramsey, he wasn't irritated. All the fires of irritation were quenched by a spout of panic. "OK," he said, "OK. There was this one time." And then there it was. The memory, released by the thoughts of those girls in college, expanded. "This time, I was in a guy's wedding, back in L.A. I was driving his new VW Squareback, and I was assigned to take all the bridesmaids to the wedding. It wasn't a hippie wedding, either. All these four girls had on yellow organdy with these rosebud bouquets, and there wasn't enough room. Their dresses poufed out everywhere, over the backs of the seats, in our faces. We had the windows down so the moving air would keep them fluffed up."

"You drove some girls to a wedding?" Eloise clearly wasn't impressed.

"But we got lost. We got lost on the freeway because I missed the exit, and then we got more lost, and we just missed the wedding altogether." Let's talk about sweat, he thought, let's talk about panic. "When we finally found the church, there was this note saying that the wedding had gone on and giving the address of the reception, so we jumped in the car again, and everyone was crying, all the girls, and their flowers were wilting, so the girl in the front threw hers out the window."

All crying. The sound, with all of them doing it, hadn't been scary, just girlish and choral, almost inspiring.

"But we didn't find the reception, either. It was a part of town I wasn't familiar with."

He'd said that over and over, a litany of excuse, "I don't know this part of town. I was raised in Pasadena."

"This is a cute story, Ramsey, but it doesn't qualify." Eloise sighed and rubbed her hand over her mouth. She would stand up, he could tell.

"It does, because I found them a wedding. A big wedding reception at a club in Malibu, outdoors with lights, under a tent. I pulled up, dropped off the car and took them inside. We didn't know anyone, and the bridesmaids for that wedding were wearing pink. The bride had left by that time, so she wasn't there to stop us. I didn't take no for an answer. Then I went around to all the best-looking guys and I found the partners, and they danced and ate wedding cake and drank champagne. I did it for them because I didn't want them to end the day with nothing."

That was something he could do. Just go up to people and ask them for something, offer them something. Those bridesmaids were the first thing he'd ever sold anybody on. Or, you could say, the one thing he'd given away. Not long afterward, he'd come East.

Eloise's laughter filled the dark room.

Ramsey said, "Eloise, don't kick me out." Now it was gone, irritability, panic, envy, longing. There was just waiting.

She said, "I want you to go home, Ramsey. But you can take my car and bring it back tomorrow. We can eat the lobsters then." Her voice still lilted with the afterglow of her laughter. Ramsey let out a deep, deep breath and smoothed the film off his upper lip. It had been a long day. His head hurt a little, more like a pinging, less like a throbbing. But he didn't mention it.

"'It's a mistake to give up on a chemistry major. Starting salaries--' Sun interrupted, 'Wanna ball?'"