A Ship Made of Paper

[16]

Despite his being in a constant state oftension from recalling and reliving the moment he lit the fuse ofthat Roman candle, despite his flulike feelings ofremorse over breaking up his family, despite his con-stant worry over Ruby’s well-being, her psychological health, her physi-cal health, and even her moods, despite his having taken down the photograph ofthe dear little girl because the sight ofit on his beige bed-room wall makes him weep, despite the many times he has called her on the telephone when she seems indisposed, distracted, and does not want to talk, despite his taking her to feed the swans that live near the shore ofa nearby monastery and turning around for a halfminute and her dis-appearing for nearly ten minutes, despite having received numerous nighttime drink-and-dial telephone calls from Kate, despite his some-times wondering how he could have thought for a moment that he could live without her, despite his having let down more than a few ofhis clients, despite the wreckage he has made ofhis practice, his career, and his reputation, despite his going from a respected and well-liked figure in his little town to a person about whom people gossip, ofwhom peo-ple do not approve, around whom people seem less than comfortable, despite the difficulties he and Iris have seeing each other since Hampton’s injury, despite his having developed a searing, steely pain in the middle ofhis heel, as ifit has been pierced by an arrow, especially in the morn-

ing, when he can barely get out ofbed the pain is so severe, despite the fact that his assistant, SheilaAlvarez, has turned contemptuous toward him, and snapped her fingers in his face and said,“Hello?”when he failed to answer one ofher rapid-fire inquiries, despite Iris’s little boy’s con-tinuing in his dislike for Daniel, his squirming away from his touch, glar-ing at him from across the Burger King booth, despite bouts offeverish nostalgia for his old domesticity, its regularities and comforts, despite his more or less despising where he now lives, where he has yet to get a de-cent night’s sleep, where he is obliged to buy cumbersome, backbreak-ing bottles ofspring water because what comes out ofthe tap smells like leprous frogs, where the idiot landlord, who has never had a tenant be-fore, continues to hover around, mowing the lawn on Saturday morn-ings, watering the scraggly, parsimoniously producing rosebushes, pruning the juniper bushes, which smell like cat urine, and who com-pulsively continues to chaperone Daniel’s relationship to the house as if the depressing little bungalow were a young virgin and Daniel himself a notorious Lothario, despite his having lost ten pounds ofmuscle and not an ounce offat, despite wiry curls ofgray hair suddenly appearing on his sideburns, despite his having begun fifteen books without getting to the end ofany ofthem, this is the happiest he has ever been.

Much ofthis happiness is purely physical.It is an animal joy, a stunning erotic completeness such as he has never experienced.Daniel had always secretly believed that people who went on about their sexual hap-piness wereexaggerating, they werelike those restaurant reviewers who compare a bowl ofsoup to a glimpse ofheaven.They were sexual gour-mets, they were like those wine critics who justify their expense-account indulgences with words that not only elevated their simple human plea-sure into some bold adventure ofthe senses but also claimed to be ex-tracting arcane nuances ofpleasure that only they could discern.

Yet now that he is with Iris, Daniel has becomeone of those people.Since the night ofthe October snow, he is a connoisseur ofsex, and ifthere wereanyone in the world with whom he could share his newly found joy, he would have become a proselytizer for the holy church ofphysical love.

For one thing, he is finally able to make love while positioned on top, which he has not been able to do since getting kicked down the stairs back on Perry Street.The long fall left him with a strained lower back, a pro-clivity toward muscle spasms, and a sciatic nerve that was like the third rail in a subway tunnel, humming with pain.It also left him unable to do what the missionary position requires, and so, week by week, and then month by month, Kate mounted Daniel and, in her words,“did all the work.”But now the pain is gone and its absence is fantastically rejuvenat-ing to him.Daniel is restored to his youthful self, shot through with the vigor and flexibility ofa man in his twenties, but a chastened, wised-up man in his twenties, one who will not waste his youth.

It is night and Daniel hovers a mere fifty feet above the town, sitting in the air just as comfortably as ifit were a chair, his legs crossed, his hands folded in his lap, his thumbs tapping each other.The first couple of times he became airborne, he expended absurd amounts ofeffort mov-ing around, or just staying aloft.He would thrust his arms in front ofhim because this is how Superman made himself aerodynamic in the movies.

Then, after a while, in a moment ofirritation and exhaustion, he thought to himself:I don’t really mind if I come crashing down,and he gave up, he simply offered himself to the elements like a swimmer succumbing to the sea, and it was fine.His presence there is as easy and uncontested as his presence on earth.He has already flown over the entire town, beam-ing down his prayers oflove and happiness to all who are sleeping, and to all whom sleep eludes.

Now, rocking back and forth on the currents ofnight air, able to move himself from here to there on the power ofthought, he hovers protectively over Iris’s house, feeling all the ferocious animal longing for her that he once felt when touching her was but a dream, feeling, in fact, more desire for the Iris who he has come to know than he had ever felt for the phantom Iris.The Iris he has come to know, the Iris who he has kissed, the Iris he has is not exactly the Iris for whom he once longed.That Iris was cast into the shadows when Hampton had his stroke.None ofthe changes that have come over her are really what he would have once hoped for.The Iris he once so deliriously craved was languid, while the Iris he knows now is ex-hausted, the Iris he courted wanted to be amused, and the Iris he has achieved wants to be comforted.And not necessarily by him.

And then, as he floats back and forth, just a few feet above her roof, but unable to enter her house even as a specter, Daniel first learns that he is not alone in the nightlife ofthe skies over Leyden.At first, he thinks he has seen an owl or some other nocturnal bird ofprey, and his second thought is that some small object has fallen from space, a meteorite, a scrap ofcosmic garbage.He turns and sees, ofall people, Derek Pabst flying rapidly, wildly due west, dressed in a pair ofdark-blue boxer shorts and a Boston Red SoxT-shirt.Derek seems not to have noticed Daniel, and though Daniel has no desire to speak to Derek, some instinct ofcamaraderie overtakes him and he calls out to his old friend.Derek, a look ofgreat anxiety on his face, turns toward the sound ofDaniel’s voice, fails to see him, and then begins to tumble head over heel, zoom-ing out toward the outskirts ofthe village like a ball oflightning.

When he turns to resume his watch over Iris’s house, she is there, facing him.She is only inches away, her nightgown streaming behind her, a look ofwonder and bewilderment on her face.

“Am I dreaming?”she asks.She starts to drift away and he catches her by the wrist, pulls her close to him.

“You’re awake.”

“I’ve had a terrible night, such a terrible, terrible night.”

“Hampton?”

“When you spend all this time with someone who cannot speak, it forces you down into yourself, but in the worst way.We’re not meant to be silent, but to him words have no meaning.So I sit there with him, and I think about you, and ifthere’s no one else around…”She stops herself, looks down.She starts to lose altitude and Daniel catches her again.She presses her lips to his palm and then places it on her breast.Her breath comes in broken pieces, as ifit must turn at right angles to escape her.“Ifthere’s no one around,”she says,“I just say what I’m thinking.I say,‘Hampton, I’m in love.I’m in love with a man who thinks I’m smart and beautiful.”

“Everyone thinks you’re smart and beautiful, Iris.”

“I stopped loving him, Daniel.Long ago.Being with someone so broken—even ifyou love them, it takes everything.How do you do it when you already stopped loving them?When you already felt trapped.When your heart is…elsewhere.He’s grotesque now.He’s frightened, he cries, and every day he gets physically stronger.But how can I leave him?”

A sudden wind comes offthe river and pushes her closer to Daniel.

“Everything in the world is telling us we don’t belong together,”he says miserably.

“Don’t you love me anymore?”

“Ofcourse I do.But it doesn’t have anything to do with that, not now.How much can love do? It’s buried.”

“I don’t feel buried.I used to, but not now.Look at me!”She spreads her arms and then raises them above her and begins to gain altitude, slowly at first, and then she soars.

“I want to see him!”Daniel shouts after her, but ifshe hears him she gives no sign ofit, she continues to rise.Unnerved, Daniel returns to his own bed.

He switches on the light on his bedside table.The lamp is shaped like a calla lily;he bought it in town, thinking that it was an iris, and that Iris would be touched by it, or at least like it.But no matter how many times she has come to this room, she seems never to notice the lamp.Nor has she mentioned the expensive brass bed he’s installed, or the five-hundred-dollar goose down comforter, or the black lacquered end tables, or the Navaho rug, or the Parisian jazz club poster, with a piano keyboard curling across it like a black-and-white woolen scarf.It all seems like a miscalculation, the fancy boudoir accoutrements.He props a pillow against the chilly brass bars ofthe bed’s headboard, picks up the book he’s been reading.He remains on his back, turns the page, and then switches to his side, propping up his head with one hand.The hand covers his right eye and the world instantly disappears.He sits bolt upright, his heart rac-ing;as soon as he removes the heel ofhis hand from his right eye the world returns.He covers the eye again.Darkness.He is blind in one eye.