Sacred Monster

Flashback 5

At night, the view from Miriam Croft’s bedroom window was of a magnificent swath of dark, twenty-seven stories below, pinked with warm and creamy lights; the stretch of Central Park extending from in front of her building on West 59th Street two and a half miles north to 110th Street, flanked by the bright towers and armed fortresses of Manhattan. The George Washington Bridge was a jeweled necklace in the far upper left of the view, a number of neoned corporate logos made glittering brooches at the throats of nearer buildings, and now and then a slow-moving hansom cab became briefly visible as it passed through the illumination of a park light far below, hinting at a gentler and more romantic age.

A magnificent view, but at this moment Miriam Croft was not observing it. At this moment, Miriam, her contact lenses out, was blurrily observing her bedroom ceiling, while Jack, atop her, performed like mad. “Oh, my Gaaaa-aahhhhd!” Miriam cried out, and Jack raced to catch up, and they crossed the finish line together, spent, panting, their two hearts pounding as one. “Oh,” Miriam said, her arms gripping him tightly around the back. “Oh. Oh.”

“Mmm, Miriam,” he murmured, smiling against her perfumed but crapen neck. Gradually he permitted more and more of his weight to rest on her, until she would want him off; at last she did, releasing him, sighing with long contentment, sliding her long-fingered hands from his back.

Then he lifted himself, rearing up on extended arms, beaming down at her, delighted in them both. “Well, well, Miriam!” he cried. “You are all right!”

Irony, briefly lost, had returned to Miriam. Stroking his cheek, smiling, she said, “The workman is as good as his tool, dear.”

“You can teach me so much!” Jack cried.

Miriam’s smile turned acid, became cold amusement. “And the first lesson, dear,” she said, “is don’t be too eager.”

“But I am eager, Miriam,” Jack cried, laughing at the truth of it. “I’m eager for everything, I’m eager to be, to be used!” Rolling off her, sitting up tailor-fashion, resting one hand on her lowest rib, he said, “I am a good actor, aren’t I?”

She nodded, slowly, solemnly, treating it as a serious question. “Probably better than you know,” she said. “And you aren’t even afraid of it, are you?”

“Why should I be?” he asked, astonished. “It makes me happy!”

“And you are going to make me happy,” she told him. “And there are no dangers at all in the world.”

“Not in our world,” he said.

How the years collide! And here I am, after all, while the past bounces and rattles away like tools left in the trunk of a car. How can I describe this to my friendly neighborhood interviewer? I cannot. I will not. These are my memories. “Ah, Miriam,” I say.

“Miriam Croft,” the interviewer says, and I can hear him imperfectly hide his disapproval. But who asked for his approval? He says, “She must have been forty years older than you.”

“Forty-three, in fact,” I say, amused after all this time by that strange fact. Doubly amused by the interviewer with his narrow little views.

“You had an affair with her,” says this prissy little man.

Disapproval gives me strength. All at once, it is possible for me to rise to a seated position, legs folded on the slate. I tuck the robe down between my legs — no use offending him that way as well — and I say, “She kept me, pal. That was an off-Broadway show we were doing. Her name wasn’t that big anymore, and the pay was peanuts. But Miriam got me the job and moved me into her Central Park South apartment. She bought me my first really good wardrobe, she introduced me to people, and she taught me how to not be too eager. Miriam was very good for me, and I think I was pretty good for her, too. Brightened her last days, you might say.”

Amusement makes me weak. I recline again, slowly, not wanting to crack the old beano on the slate. Very valuable slate, you know. I lie down. I smile at the sky. The interviewer waits, so I say it: “Brightened her last moments, in point of fact.”