The Hand That Feeds You

18

I was on my way to Steven’s for a halfhearted nod to Thanksgiving. He had offered to pick up the basics from Citarella and said I only needed to show up with the pie. I was about a block from his apartment when Billie called on my cell.

“I know how you’re feeling and I wanted you to know that you’re not alone with that.”

“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” I asked, thinking that if she had no plans, I might invite her along to Steven’s.

“I volunteer at a soup kitchen — St. Cecilia RC parish in Greenpoint.”

I felt one-upped and tried to shake off the feeling. It was nice what she was doing; it didn’t have to mean I was selfish to celebrate with my brother.

“If you finish by eight, you’re welcome to stop by my brother’s for some pumpkin pie.”

“That’s a nice invitation, but McKenzie asked me to have a drink with him when I finished.”

I saw the aura that migraine victims experience before the pain kicks in. I felt helpless and blinded by fizzing light.

“Are you there?”

I realized I had said nothing in response to this news. “I’m here.”

“Did I upset you? Wait — you’re not interested in McKenzie, are you?”

“It’s too soon for me to think about something like that,” I managed.

“Of course. But you can see why I am. Humane and handsome.”

“I’m getting on the subway,” I lied.

Billie sent her best to my brother.

• • •

Steven had bought enough food for a dozen guests.

“I hope you have room in your freezer,” I said.

The TV was on, a documentary we’d already seen twice, about Danny Way, the guy who jumped the Great Wall of China on a skateboard. Waiting for Lightning was part of Steven’s collection of DVDs on extreme-sports heroes. We often watched together: Laird Hamilton and Travis Pastrana were in it, too. We found it inspiring to see the person who was the best in the world at what he did, and who had achieved this against heavy odds.

Steven had already set the table, even lighting candles. The effect would have been complete if he hadn’t been wearing flannel pajama pants and a THRASHER T-shirt.

“I could watch him every day,” I said.

“You want some wine?”

“I want a drink drink. You have any vodka?”

He took a bottle of Stoli out of the freezer. “You’ve earned it,” he said, handing it to me.

I poured myself a double. Steven did the same. We raised our glasses.

“To George,” he said.

We took our places at the table, surrounded by food pretty enough to be photographed. I put some of everything on my plate, knowing I wouldn’t be able to eat.

“I heard from Billie on my way over just now. I invited her to join us but she’s meeting up with McKenzie later,” I said, fishing for a reaction. Sometimes we ask for the very thing that will undo us.

“He’s seeing her again?” Steven asked, then saw in my face the weight of the word again. “Listen, it’s going to last about three minutes. In fact, the three minutes are probably up.”

“Shit, he slept with her already?”

“She has one setting: high.”

“Did he say that, or is that your observation?”

“You’ve seen her.”

What had I seen? A beautiful and energetic woman whose confidence carried her past roadblocks. What man would turn her down?

“But I didn’t see it coming,” Steven said.

“Why not?”

“You never met McKenzie’s wife, Louise. Don’t think he’s quite over her. She was in law school with us. Her gaze was focused outward, not on herself. I had a thing for her myself. So did every guy in the class.”

“Was she that compelling?”

“She was just so comfortable in her skin. She had a kind of confidence. There was nothing coy about her. I never understood why some women think coyness is appealing to a man. It’s just silly. Claire had it, too, that confidence; you can’t meet it halfway.”

“I know about Louise’s death.”

“Did he tell you? He never talks about it.”

“I found it online.”

Steven’s plate already had room for seconds. Mine was untouched.

I could have asked more questions about my brother’s former classmate. But what was I trying to find out? Why he had asked out Billie instead of me? Steven would not have the answer.

Instead of getting up to serve himself again, Steven switched his empty plate with my full one. He was kind enough to refrain from remarking on my lack of appetite. I poured myself another Stoli to keep him company for a half hour more.

• • •

My third Stoli was poured by the bartender at Isle of Skye. I had thought of calling Amabile, who lived nearby. I was not ready to go home. But I knew he’d be with his huge Dominican family, and it was just as well; familiarity was not what I wanted. I hadn’t been to this bar before; usually I went to Barcade and played the vintage arcade games, such as Tapper. Made me feel like a kid again. Isle of Skye had a different vibe: Scottish, black leather, a pub filled with Scots not celebrating Thanksgiving. Behind the bar was a framed photo of the queen in front of a line of seated Scotsmen in kilts; the man seated to her right wore a kilt that had ridden up to reveal his naked genitals.

I looked over the crowd — more men than women, more hipster than Highlander, then took out my cell phone and checked the Tinder account I’d opened before I met Bennett. A photo of a shirtless guy in board shorts came up on my screen with a user name of Swampthing. Want to meet him? the pop-up asked. Yes? No? Maybe? I tapped Maybe. Do you want to see how close Swampthing is? I tapped Yes. He was two blocks away. The moment I tapped Yes, he was able to see my profile and picture. His profile said he was an actor who taught mixed martial arts. He said he liked Bollywood films, Russian vodka, and American women. I tapped I’m two for three.

I had nearly finished my drink when I got a message from Swampthing asking where I was. I tapped in the name of the bar. A couple of minutes later, a rangy, loose-limbed guy walked in, and even from yards away and in the dim light of the bar, I could see that he had blue eyes. With his dark hair falling in those eyes, he was a dazzler.

“You don’t look like your picture,” he said in an uninflected voice. Did he mean it didn’t do me justice, or that I had perpetrated a fraud?

“You look exactly like yours,” I said, trying to match his ambiguous tone.

“I’m glad you were looking tonight. Holidays can be slow.”

A wise friend had once told me that just because a man is good-looking doesn’t necessarily mean he is a bastard. I realized I was making excuses for him and he hadn’t done anything except respond to my query.

“Can I get you another drink?” he asked, and signaled for the bartender before I answered.

“Sure,” I said after the fact.

I started asking him about himself. Not because I wanted information, per se, but so that I could listen to his voice. I had always been swayed by men’s voices. His was deep, and he sounded as though he were confiding in me. The trace of a Southern accent came from time to time; Louisiana? Oh, God, let him be from New Orleans.

Close enough: he said he was from Lafayette, and that his daddy’s side was Cajun. And what had he acted in? This was a dicey question, potentially embarrassing. He said he’d had a small speaking part in a Gus Van Sant film, and he was up for a part in an HBO series.

I had never wanted to be on screen or stage, but it didn’t stop me from the kind of interest many people felt for those who did. How were actors able to lose themselves in front of strangers? What if you were still trying to find yourself? “Do you want to keep”—here he made air quotes—“ ‘getting to know each other,’ or do you want to go have some fun?” He had managed to both mock and entice me. He had issued a dare. I had a moment of magical thinking that persuaded me that nothing bad could happen on Thanksgiving.

We went to his place in Dumbo. The way in was complicated; we had to go around to the back of a renovated warehouse, where he jimmied the lock after inserting the key. Were it not for lights on in some of the building’s windows, I would not have considered going in.

Inside his apartment, in front of a window facing the Brooklyn Bridge, hung a punching bag. Leather, the color of cognac, it looked as if it might have been a movie prop. “Is this where you train?”

“No.” He did not offer more.

I moved to the window to look at the view, but he cut my sightseeing short. He took off my coat and threw it over an armchair. Then he took my hair and wrapped it around his fist. He stood behind me like that. I held on to his wrist. He let go first. When I turned to face him, he picked me up the way a groom picks up his bride, and he carried me into the back of the apartment, to his bed.

Within minutes, he turned on a bright bedside lamp. “I want to see you.”

I saw the bank of windows in his bedroom had no curtains or shades, and that the room faced a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows in the modern building next door. In the same moment in which I felt exposed, and on exhibit, I also felt safe. I could be seen. He took off the rest of my clothes. He said he was surprised he found me so attractive, that I wasn’t his type.

Would McKenzie have said such a thing, have had such a thought? I answered my own question: Trust me, he’s not giving you a thought.

The flicker passed, and I was back in the moment. “Does your type do this?” I asked, touching myself. I didn’t take my eyes off his face. “Does your type do this?” I put my finger inside myself. What had put me off moments before — the brightly lit room open to the eyes of neighbors — was encouraging me in an unexpected way. I thought of Billie. She startled me. I felt myself in competition with her in front of this man, and at the same time I wanted to be her.

I performed.

While still watching me, he started to undress. I told him, “No.” So he left his clothes on and crouched at the foot of the mattress where he could see my body at that level — if I moved from posing on my knees to lying down. I could sense the pressure in him, the pressure of holding back. Of waiting. I went on. I took my time. I made myself come in front of him in the brightly lit room.

He stayed where he was at the foot of the bed while I got dressed. Neither of us said a thing. I noticed a light go on in the building across the way.

He made no plea for reciprocity. Was it astonishment that let him let me go?

• • •

The semester break was a week away, and I was at Rikers for a last session with a patient, a transsexual I had met with for the past year. She was being released the following week. Shalonda was able to convince anyone she was female. She had delicate features, a warm and lilting voice, and breasts she had saved up for since high school. She had taken the rap for her lover in a check-fraud scam, yet hoped they could resume their domestic life in Ozone Park.

“I know JJ is a fuckup, but I also know he loves me,” Shalonda said.

“How does he show it?” I really wanted to know.

“He tells his friends, and it gets back to me.”

“He never tells you?”

“He bought me a dress for when I get out. He wants me to have the final surgery.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to make JJ happy. You think that’s not a good reason.”

I felt then that we had made no progress whatsoever. She still could not acknowledge her own wants and needs.

“I learned a long time ago,” Shalonda said, “that you can be happy, or you can be right. I’m happy when JJ thinks he’s right.”

My affair with Bennett had been so complete a secret that performing the night before in the brightly lit room with a stranger had been a kind of extreme antidote; it made me feel that I set the terms.

“Say again?” I said to Shalonda.

“Where did you go?” She was grinning. “You just went somewhere.”

I blushed at the unprofessional lapse. I apologized for a late night and turned my attention back to my patient.

“I said I know who I am in whatever form I take. The surgery doesn’t take anything away from me. Well, besides the obvious.”

This felt like cheating — I was getting as much if not more from the session than Shalonda. Her solid sense of herself, her calm wisdom — I felt better the longer we talked.

I told Shalonda it had been a privilege to work with her and said I hoped she would let me know how she was doing on the outside. I gave her a business card, after adding my home number to it in ballpoint pen. We hugged each other, and Shalonda said, “It’s a good feeling to surprise yourself — you’ll see.”

Was Shalonda a mind reader? I’d certainly surprised myself last night.

I decided to walk across the bridge to Queens even though it looked like a military zone with its razor wire and checkpoints. The wind was chafing.

I’d had all the surprise I needed, thanks to Bennett. Or so I thought. When I passed a deli with a newsstand, I stopped when I read the Post headline: “Heartless.” The cover story was about a fifty-two-year-old woman found in her painting studio in Sag Harbor with her heart cut out of her body and placed on top of her chest.

I sat down on a milk crate and put my head between my knees. When I could, I stood up and bought the paper. The clerk called after me to give me my change.

The reporter wrote that the body had been posed in an approximation of self-portraits the victim had made in which she photographed herself with a pig’s heart on her chest. The coroner estimated the death had occurred a week prior. There were no leads yet as to who might have committed the grisly murder.

I was in that studio a week ago. Pat’s dog had lunged at the window, at a sound outside. If I hadn’t left when I did, would I have been killed, too? My hair lifted slightly from my scalp as though lightning had passed through me. Had Pat’s killer seen me through the windows? Was the killer watching me now? I flagged a taxi and gave Steven’s address to the driver. I’d have to ask Steven to pay the fare from Queens.

“You’re staying here tonight,” Steven said after I told him what had happened.

“What about Olive?”

“We’ll smuggle her in.” Dogs were not allowed in his building.

“Samantha was the one who told me where Pat lived. She still thinks Bennett’s alive. She says he writes to her and sends her flowers.”

Steven asked if I thought Samantha was capable of an act of such savagery.

“I think she followed me to Sag Harbor.”

“You didn’t tell me this. You’ve got to go to the police.”

“They didn’t take me seriously when I called them about Susan Rorke.”

“You weren’t there when she was killed.” Steven handed me his cell phone.

I did what he wanted. I was connected with a detective in the Suffolk County PD and told him my suspicions in the calmest “I’m not a crazy person” manner I could summon. I said I thought this person had killed twice and told him about Susan Rorke. He scheduled an early-morning appointment for me to make a statement.

I was exhausted when I got off the phone. I slumped into a chair in Steven’s living room, head in hand, the picture of defeat. Then Steven asked if I was ready to go pick up Olive. I saw that while I’d been on the phone, he had emptied out his gym bag and outfitted it with a soft fleece and towels warm from the dryer for my little dog.