Vapor

Chapter Fourteen

I decided I would set Damon free. Worse than that, I would enter Damon’s cage, to prove to myself that I finally understood him and that he wouldn’t hurt me, kill me, or lock me in the cage. It was also to show him that I trusted him. I wanted us to be friends if possible. I wanted us to be normal people, standing in front of each other out of our own free will. What an interesting sensation it would be, to have a conversation with Damon without one of us being the other’s captive.

When I arrived home, I peeked through the one-way mirror. Damon was jogging in place in his cage. I donned my fencing armor. Before going in, I peeked again through the mirror. Damon was on the floor, doing pushups.

As soon as I entered the room, he got up, panting, and clapped the floor dust from his hands. He glanced around his cage, grabbed some tuna cans and threw them at me. They bounced off my mask. He threw every object he had, including the can opener. Then he plopped down on his bed, tired, and said, “How was your trip?”

“Very enlightening.”

“Enlightening?”

“Yes.”

“And what aspect of life did it enlighten?” he asked, his hand encountering something hard in his sheets. He uncovered the object: another unopened can of tuna. He threw it at me.

“The aspect I couldn’t understand,” I said.

“That goes without saying. What aspect was that?”

“I’m not in the mood to talk about it right now.”

“Oh? And what mood are you in?”

“I think … I’m in an insane mood.”

I approached the door of his cage and unlocked it. I stepped inside, holding on to the bars to make sure I wouldn’t fall down from fright.

We stared at each other, barely breathing. He looked frozen, and I wondered if he was afraid of me. The possibility made me laugh. Just one laugh: one loud, awkward, nervous, “Ha!” The sound of it was so funny and silly that two more came out of me, equally funny and silly. I held my breath to block the others.

Damon got up and approached me. His hands reached toward my face, and he pulled off my mask.

He gazed into my eyes for a long moment and kissed me.

I didn’t care how insane it was; how sick and embarrassing — not to mention banal and unoriginal, not to mention dangerous — to be kissing your assailant. The only two things that made it slightly less objectionable were that he was my ex-assailant and that I had been his assailant too, since then.

We kissed passionately, and astonishingly lovingly, for two mutual assailants. I was able to forget, for a few moments at a time, the possibility that he might suddenly turn around and lock me in the cage. I was able to forget, and then I would remember, and then forget again, when his enthusiasm, like a wave, transported me away from thought.

Slowly, gradually, we started making love. But we had barely just begun, when I jumped off the bed, grabbed my clothes, and ran out of the cage. He grabbed his clothes and ran after me at a phenomenal rate. I rushed down the stairs and out of my building. He followed me. When we were in the street, we stopped running, got dressed, and I said, “Why are you running after me?”

“I’m not running after you. I was running out of that cage, that room, and your apartment before you had a chance to lock me in again. Why were you running?”

“For the same reason.”

“That doesn’t make sense. I couldn’t have kept you locked in, while going in and out of your building as I pleased. As soon as people found you missing, the first place they would check is your apartment.”

“That’s true,” I said, and was tempted to suggest that we go back upstairs and continue where we left off. But then I came to my senses. “No, actually, you’re wrong. You could find a way to sneak me out of the building and take me back to a cage in some house in the country.”

“Huh, I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Is that supposed to mean you wish you had thought of it because you think it’s a good idea?”

“No. I just meant: huh, I hadn’t thought of that legitimate reason you could have to be afraid of me in your apartment, the same way I’m afraid of you.”

I nodded. We kissed again. Between kisses, I mumbled, “What are we going to do?”

“The options are limited. We could wait till we’re no longer afraid.”

“No! That would take too long. It could take days, or months, or years, or never happen.”

“I know. Even hours would be long,” he said.

It was too cold to stay outside, especially for Damon, who could not wear opaque clothing. So we decided to go to a movie theater. We sat in the back row and continued kissing, never looking at the screen. I felt as if I should be wearing a seat belt.

Amid the kisses, we had a brief exchange.

“Why did you walk into my cage?” asked Damon.

“I had an urge.”

“What brought it on?”

“I always had it, I think.”

“What made you act on it?”

“I’ll tell you one day.”

He kissed me again and slid his hand under the elastic waistband of my skirt. This was not tolerable. Our pitch of frustration became simply cruel. Halfway through the movie, we went to a nearby diner and locked ourselves in the ladies’ room. We did not let ourselves be influenced by movies: we did not make love standing up. We did it on the floor, which was more exciting. The floor of a public bathroom, just large enough to accommodate our horizontal bodies. It was not excessively dirty. It had just the right amount of dirt to add grit to our sex.

We spent a few more hours together that day, during which we mostly rode up and down the city on a bus, because a bus was warm, safely public, economical, and offered varied scenery. On that bus, Damon confessed to having been in love with me from the beginning, but having not wanted to tell me for fear of ruining the effectiveness of his training. I became gloomy at this reminder of my days as a kidnapped person.

He said, “I’m sorry I kidnapped you to make you happy. I know you feel it wasn’t worth it.”

“Even if it was worth it, you had no right to do it,” I said.

We spoke in earnest whispers, so as not to be overheard by the other passengers.

“I know,” he said. “But I wanted to make you happy in a completely selfless way. Beginning a romance with you would not have been selfless. It might have made you happy, but it would have made me happy too.”

“What about when you were in the cage? How did you feel about me then?”

“I loved you at all times. In the cage, I loved you. When I threw cans at you—” He lowered his voice, because an old woman who was within earshot was staring at us with what appeared to be either shock or disapproval. “I loved you.”

“Then why did you throw them at me?” I asked.

“To put on a good show of wanting to be let out. And because part of me did want to be let out.”

“Then why didn’t you just let me know how you felt about me?”

“I didn’t want to impose myself on you. I didn’t want to offer you anything that you didn’t want. On top of it, it’s hard to think of smooth moves to perform from behind bars.” He paused. “Remember, my plan had been to give you what you wanted; not my version of what I thought or hoped you wanted.”

When Damon and I parted that first night, he said he would be sleeping in a hotel, thinking of me, and that he would call me the next morning. We were still afraid of each other.

I hadn’t told him about my visit to his brother Philip’s or about Philip’s desire to see him again. I thought it might cause turmoil or agitation within him, and I didn’t want that to happen; not before finding out how this strange new twist in our relationship would evolve.

That night, it felt lonely to no longer have my pet in his cage. The sight of the empty cage was disturbing, like a fish tank whose occupant had passed away and been flushed down the toilet.

I walked into the cage and touched the things he had touched. I touched the edge of his bathtub. I used his toilet to see what it had been like for him, for weeks, to use that toilet. I took a bath in his tub. I turned on the TV and watched it while sitting on the floor, the way he had. I turned on his cherished cello music with the remote control, and I listened to my ex’s compositions, wondering if listening to them from behind the bars would help them move me the way they had moved Damon. Not really, as it turned out.

I slept in his bed that night.

Damon did call me the next day. We spent it together, again in the safety of publicness, and in bliss. We had sex in three different public places: a fitting room in the men’s section of a department store, a church, and, late at night, between two moving subway cars. A hotel room would have been too risky, not public enough: he could knock me unconscious and sneak me out in a big bag or something. And I could do the same to him, of course, from his point of view.

We saw each other again the next day, and for a while almost every day after that. Always in public. We were extremely demonstrative by necessity; the city was our bedroom.

He would watch me while I finished starring in the big-budget movie, whose last few scenes were being shot in town. We gazed at each other between takes, he standing a ways off, out of the way. It was unsettling to see Damon — my trainer — right there, watching what he had taught me, or rather, what he had forced me to teach myself.

After that first day, we never mentioned our imprisonment of each other. We acted as if it never happened. Understandably, it was a touchy subject.

When our lifestyle seemed too impractical, we tried to reason with each other about our mutual distrust. I tried to persuade him that he had nothing to fear from me.

“I’m the one who opened the door of your cage. Why would I now want to harm you or imprison you again?”

“I can say the same to you. I came into your apartment to find out why you were unhappy, yet knowing it was probably a trap. Why would I want to harm you or imprison you again?”

“Because it was a trap and you might want revenge.”

“Then why did I kiss you when you came in the cage? Why didn’t I just yank you in and lock the door?”

Sometimes we got to a stage in our convoluted conversations where the whole thing felt silly to both of us and it seemed obvious we could trust each other. We would then gingerly head for my apartment, with the intention of taming privacy, but as we got closer, we became more quiet, more anxious, and our steps slowed.

“It doesn’t feel okay,” I would finally say.

“I’m relieved you said it first.”

“The only way I can imagine myself feeling at ease alone with you in my apartment is if you’re in the cage.”

“And that is precisely why I don’t feel at ease going to your apartment.”

Our discussions on the topic went in infinite circles. And yet we kept having them every time it felt uncomfortable, or seemed like a shame, to lock ourselves in a rest room somewhere.

I still hadn’t told Damon that I knew about his past and had met his brother. I felt guilty about not having told him, and I often had the urge to tell him, and sometimes I was on the verge of my urge, but then I never did, always coming up with some excuse or other: the present excuse was that I wanted to wait until we’d figured out how to tolerate privacy together. Our relationship would then be more solid and more likely to withstand any damage my confession might cause. So I waited.

Progress on the privacy issue only really got going one day when I caught a cold from lying with Damon in the cool spring grass in Central Park. I decided the time had come for things to change.

While Damon was nursing my cold in a deli, making sure I drank my herb tea and ate my chicken soup, I said, “I wish you could nurse me in my apartment.”

“Me too.”

“It would be so nice. You could take care of me in my own bed. We could rent movies. You could take advantage of me while I have my fever.”

“Maybe we should try it again, try walking to your apartment and see if we can actually make it upstairs this time.”

“No, we won’t try, because when we try we don’t succeed. We will actually do it this time. But after some preparations. I’ll take down the cage; have it removed. I’ll take the lock off the door to my bedroom. And then we’ll force ourselves to go up, and we’ll stay there, no matter how unpleasant or scary it is to be alone with each other. We’ll stay there until the discomfort wears off. It’ll have to, eventually. Don’t you think?”

“It’s a great idea. It’s the only solution.”

A few days later, workmen came and dismantled the cage and took it away. A locksmith came and took off the lock.

Damon and I walked to my apartment in grave silence, our hearts pounding. We arrived at the door to my building, walked in, walked up, did not stop at any point. I unlocked my door. The sight of keys made us both shiver with dread. Damon actually looked away, at the wall, until the door was unlocked and the keys were out of sight.

I gave him a nervous tour of my remodeled apartment. He approved. We sat on my couch and drank tea, making polite conversation. After forty-five minutes of this, I got carried away by excitement, because my plan was working: we were actually existing in the same room together, not separated by bars, not protected from each other by the presence of other people, and not threatening each other in any way. I flung myself around his neck and kissed him and said, “I love you.”

He smiled, and laughed, and told me he loved me too, and pushed me back against the sofa and became passionate, like in the rest rooms and the movie theaters, but of course even more unrestrained.

For a week we stayed in my apartment, doing only a small range of activities, but doing them over and over: conducting sensual and erotic experiments, renting movies, eating all sorts of things. The only times we went out were to buy more groceries. I would put on my boots and my winter coat, not bothering to get dressed underneath, and he’d wear his usual transparencies.

The days passed and I still didn’t tell him about his brother, because I felt more days had to pass before I could.

So more days passed. We started going outdoors a bit. We had sex between moving subway cars a couple of times, for old times’ sake, despite the danger, and dangerous it was: Damon would hold me firmly, and I would jokingly remind him not to let go of me. But once, which understandably turned out to be the last time we did it there, he did. I caught myself in the nick of time, while simultaneously getting a vision of what would have happened to my body if I hadn’t. He said he was sorry, that the jerkiness of the ride had made him lose his grip on me. He seemed very upset that I had almost been squashed, and for a while he wouldn’t stop hugging me and burying his face in my neck, even as we walked away from the scene of my near death.

I still worked a lot, but also managed to devote much time to Damon. I would leave the sets as soon as the scenes were shot; I didn’t linger to socialize with the other actors. I never had dinner with them.

I’d spend time studying my lines while Damon did his research. Sometimes, he would ask me if I needed help, but he was always very careful because he knew it was a touchy topic. He tried to be very delicate, and very respectful of whatever answer I would give him, which was no thanks.

One time, to make our relationship as normal as possible, and so that he wouldn’t think I resented him too much, I casually asked him if he could help me with my lines. He tried to respond calmly, and said okay, and sat near me, but it was clear he was a bit nervous. I recited my lines while he looked at the script, and I got them right, so he had nothing to correct. He just smiled normally at me when I was done. I pushed it a step further, because I couldn’t resist, and I was curious.

“Do you have any suggestions? Any thoughts on my delivery?” I asked.

He cleared his throat. He must have known I was torturing him on purpose. “I thought it was very well done.” His voice was gentle. “Very subtle and interestingly nuanced.”

I waited to see if he would say more. He sensed this and added, “I’m only a scientist. You’re now at a level of acting that is way beyond the realm where I can offer any useful opinion.”

I think he was afraid he had said too much, that he had been presumptuous, for he looked down at the floor humbly, as if wishing he could go under it.

I observed him, amused. However, not wanting to be excessively tormenting, I breezily said, “Well, thank you for your help,” and changed the topic.

He seemed relieved.

One day, I started having a new urge, that type of overpowering, irrational urge, like wanting to enter your assailant’s cage or be thrown off a diving board: I wanted to introduce Damon to my parents. I had told them I was dating somebody, and they had expressed great interest in meeting the person, asking if he was an actor too. I told them he was a scientist. When they asked what kind of scientist, I changed the subject until I could think of a good answer. I discussed the possibilities with Damon. He didn’t hesitate as to which scientific profession he wanted them to think he had.

“Tell them I’m an experimental astrophysicist, that I build experiments that fly in space. Telescopes and spectrometers that are launched on sounding rockets and satellites, that kind of thing. I can tell them all about it if they’re interested. Who wouldn’t be? I think I know enough jargon to pull it off.”

I laughed, amazed. “Why do you want them to think you’re an experimental astrophysicist?”

“It sounds good. Nothing sounds better, in fact. Who wouldn’t want to be introduced as an experimental astrophysicist?”

On the whole, Damon thought my urge to introduce him to my parents was insane and self-destructive, but he wanted to please me, and therefore acquiesced, despite the great peril he felt he was putting himself in.

And he was not entirely wrong: my parents were still obsessed with capturing my kidnapper. They were constantly calling the police, asking if there was any progress, if anything had turned up. My father, especially, was persistent and indefatigable in his efforts. He wanted the monster behind bars, he said. Considering all these factors, I don’t know why I had such a strong desire to make the introductions, but I did. I simply thought Damon was wonderful, and I wanted them to see just how wonderful my new boyfriend was. I loved him so immensely, so intensely, so far.

I tried to reassure Damon and myself: “Why would they start suspecting who you are? I’d have to be insane to get involved with my assailant. They don’t think I’m insane.”

There was only one thing Damon and I had to work on before the meeting: his clothes. My parents knew that my assailant had worn, at all times, transparent clothing.

I discussed with Damon the possibility of his wearing opaque clothing. He said he wasn’t sure it could work for him, because it would be like trying to breathe on very little air. He could only do it if he was extremely calm, but any slight turmoil would make him start suffocating.

He hadn’t worn opaque clothing in years, and yet he was willing to try it now, for me. He practiced it before the dinner and did fine; we even had sex while he remained dressed opaquely.

On our way out, however, we argued about up to where his shirt should be buttoned. I said high. He said low — preferably open all the way, as far as he was concerned; it would help him breathe. He had wanted to wear shorts and his usual sandals. I had told him it was out of the question, and that he should look at the bright side: at least he didn’t have to wear a tie. He had gone pale at the mere mention of the word.

We had finally settled on a thin, green, short-sleeved shirt; a ripped pair of blue jeans (the holes calmed him slightly); rain boots that were vaguely translucent; and, most important, one leather glove to cover up his missing finger. My parents knew all too well that I had chopped off Damon’s finger; they not only knew it, they were delighted by it, and bragged about it often to their friends.

The meeting was to be held at my parents’ apartment. We were to have dinner there.

I still had not told Damon I had met his brother. He was about to meet my parents, and he had no idea I had already met a member of his family. I felt bad, but also felt it was important to keep it a secret, for now. I wanted him to be as calm and relaxed as possible for the meeting. Once we had crossed that threshold successfully, I could be open.

Right before ringing my parents’ doorbell, Damon and I were still wresting with the buttons on his green shirt. Finally, he got me to let him keep more than the top two buttons open; I got him to keep less than the top four buttons open.

My parents were innocent and pure in their expectations, unsuspicious. They were ready, willing, and hopeful to have nothing but the highest opinion of my boyfriend. And it began well. They seemed pleased immediately. Their smiles, already broad when they opened the door, broadened when they got their first glimpse of Damon.

He made a good impression in opaque clothing, despite showing a lot of chest; he was attractive. They took his coat, which of course he was not wearing, but carrying. My father extended his hand toward Damon’s gloved hand, to remind him to take off the glove. I noticed this just in time.

“Andy has a birth defect,” I said. Damon and I had decided that Andy would be his new name for my parents, and we had practiced using it, to prevent blunders. “The skin on his left hand is fragile, and can’t be exposed to daylight or hard angles. It has to be constantly protected by that glove, because if it gets injured, which happens very easily, it doesn’t heal by itself: it has to be taken care of by a doctor.”

I estimated that this was more than enough information to assure that my parents would leave his hand alone. And sure enough, they politely ignored his hand. But not for more than five minutes — at least not my father. He said to Damon, “You know, I’m a hemophiliac.”

Damon nodded and uttered a little “Oh.”

“Are you one too?”

“Not exactly.”

I begged my father to shut up. My mother seconded me. So he did.

We had drinks. My father updated me on the lack of progress the police were making in capturing my kidnapper. He turned to Damon:

“Isn’t it terrible what happened to Anna? I don’t know if she’s told you all the details — I assume she has. For someone to do to another human being what this man, this Damon, did to her, he must be a deranged monster, don’t you think, Andy? Don’t you think it’s the most abominable thing, what he did to her?”

Damon replied, “Anna hasn’t told me much about it, but she did tell me it was horrible. Despite the success she’s achieved in her career she doesn’t think it was worth it.”

“Of course she doesn’t think it was worth it! Do you think it was worth it?”

“Only Anna can decide that. And she did decide it wasn’t worth it. But I must say I have a vested interest in the issue. If Anna had not been kidnapped, she probably would not then have been at the cast party where I met her. So if you find me hesitant to condemn her kidnapper, it’s undoubtedly for that reason.”

My mother chuckled, charmed. My father looked uncertain as to how he felt about that.

In a misguided effort to win my father over, Damon said, “The kidnapper made a mistake in kidnapping Anna. It was poor judgment on his part, and he undoubtedly feels bad about it now, especially if he somehow knows that Anna feels it wasn’t worth it. Poor man. I pity him.” After being silent a moment, Damon added: “I suspect he was in love with Anna and wanted to make her dream come true.”

“Yes, exactly. There is no excuse for that,” said my father.

During dinner, my mother said, “Andy, what does your work consist of, exactly? I’m fascinated.”

“I build telescopes and detectors to see the sky in X ray. These optical systems are then sent out of the atmosphere to gather their information. Now I’m working on a European project called XMM, which stands for X-ray Multi-Mirror. It has three co-aligned telescopes, two of which will be equipped with reflection grating spectrometers. Those spectrometers are what I’m working on. It’s really a spectroscopic mission, rather than an imaging one. The imaging missions always bring back nice pictures and are good for P.R., but spectroscopy doesn’t excite the public much. Nevertheless, it is the spectroscopy that produces the most scientific breakthroughs. Usually black holes could only be identified spectroscopically, for example. Anyway, it’s really a big project involving scientists from many countries, and it’ll be launched in two years or so. Nothing like the small homemade experiments that I launched on sounding rockets in the past. Those were like bottle rockets by comparison.”

Damon seemed to greatly enjoy describing his fictitious job. He even added, “It’s a very sexy field.”

“It does sound sexy,” said my father.

“Sexy like fencing. The same kind of sexy,” said Damon.

My father nodded, and my mother dreamily said, “Yeah.”

As Damon continued describing his work animatedly, he became less careful with his gloved hand; he moved it naturally, as if it were not gloved, which was a big mistake. In allowing his hand to move so naturally, he was actually allowing it to look very unnatural: he didn’t notice that where the glove covered his absent index finger it remained, at all times, stiff and pointing. Damon and I had talked about this phenomenon and that he would have to be careful about it. But he was not being careful enough. To my distress, I noticed my father’s gaze rest upon the straight, frozen finger, and then, to my horror, I noticed that his eyes would not leave that finger. As soon as Damon noticed my father’s gaze, his other fingers froze as well. He stopped talking, drank, and desperately resumed his occupational explanations, trying to recapture my father’s interest: “I’m interested in observing the life cycle of stars and the gases that they’re made of. You see, stars form out of collapsing clouds in the galaxy.”

“Clouds of what?” asked my mother.

“Mostly hydrogen,” answered Damon, “and small amounts of other elements, like helium, carbon, oxygen, and dust. Often the cloud material is in molecular phase. When the clouds’ self-gravity exceeds their sustaining pressure, they tend to collapse, give off heat, and when they become dense enough, they begin to burn and turn into stars. The less dense parts of the clouds might be blown away by the stars’ radiation pressure.”

I couldn’t believe he was talking so much about clouds, a topic too close to his real occupation, which I had finally told my parents about, after my escape. I was sitting too far from him to kick him under the table, so I shook my head at him, mouthing the word cloud.

He immediately changed the topic: “I used to work at Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee, doing surface physics with Dr. Dennis Zilkha. There I spent months measuring surface reactions between oxygen and this wonder-alloy nickel aluminum. For a while there was a lot of interest in nickel aluminum. It’s light, has high-tensile strength, and is resistant to heat, so there were plenty of potential applications for it as a material.”

Damon had not succeeded in diverting my father’s attention from his finger for even a second, and now Damon was becoming distressed. How did this distress manifest itself? He unbuttoned a button on his shirt. My mother, who still had not noticed his pointing finger, did clearly notice the unbuttoning. My father, vice versa.

Damon shifted in his seat. He was suffocating subtly, and so discreetly. He lowered his ungloved hand under the table and was doing something there with it, and because I knew him, I knew that he was trying to take off his pants. It was tragic. His gloved hand remained in sight; I’m sure he was too afraid to move it, in case it broke the spell of paralysis that seemed to have befallen my father. Damon was still talking about experimental astrophysics, which didn’t work on my mother, who looked surprised and uncomfortable, but politely didn’t say so; and which was wasted on my father, who wasn’t about to notice any undressing, as long as the finger remained rigid. Consequently, Damon was being driven mad. As casually as he could, he pushed his shirt off one shoulder. His ungloved hand was back under the table and he was clearly trying to lower his pants, but he was having a hard time of it without getting up. Out of frustration, he yanked his shirt off his other shoulder, causing the fabric to stretch across his torso, where the next button, looking ready to pop off, was holding the two halves together. Both of his shoulders were now bare.

My father got up from his chair and went to the kitchen, saying, “Does anyone want garlic salt?” He came back carrying the garlic salt and his fencing epée. He sat down, sprinkled some garlic salt on his food, and asked Damon if he wanted some.

Damon said, “No thanks,” and went on compulsively: “There are all kinds of cool ways to tell what’s happening on surfaces, like Auger electron spectroscopy [AES], X ray photoelectron spectroscopy [XPS], and low-energy electron diffraction [LEED]. You can measure the chemical environment of surface atoms using XPS, literally see the surface order with LEED diffraction patterns, and get complete surface atomic composition with AES—”

Damon stopped talking when my father took his sword, slid it between Damon’s index and middle fingers, and bent Damon’s empty glove finger backward until it was flat against the top of his hand. Everyone was silent.

“You’re Damon,” announced my father, red-faced, full of outrage and triumph.

Damon jumped up from his chair. He had successfully lowered his pants. He now finished taking them off, and then his shirt, and then his underwear. His boots had been taken off ages ago and were lying under the table. Lastly, he whipped off his glove, which for an instant revealed his amputation, and ran out of the apartment (which was on the ground floor), and through the lobby, stark naked.

The stripping was what saved him: my parents were still in their chairs, too stunned to move. I grabbed a raincoat from the hall closet and chased after him. He had run past the doorman, who was laughing when I passed.

I found Damon huddling in a doorway a few doors down the street. I wrapped him in the raincoat, which unfortunately was black and opaque. He pushed it away, saying, “I can’t.” He was crying.

I walked with him, trying to hold the raincoat around him, to cover him up as much as possible.

“Don’t touch me with it,” he kept repeating and punching it where it happened to touch his skin.

I was annoyed at myself for not having brought his transparent clothes as a precautionary measure. Who did I think he was: a normal person?

When Damon calmed down slightly, we stopped at a corner to get a cab. While I tried to hail one, I ordered Damon to hold the raincoat in front of him, shielding the oncoming traffic from his nudity, which of course did no such favor to the pedestrians and shopkeepers behind him, where a small crowd soon gathered.

A cab finally stopped and took us to my apartment building. Before we got out, I luckily noticed, also disembarking, my parents, who had just arrived in another cab. I begged our driver to speed us away. My parents shoved themselves back into their cab and sped after us. It didn’t take us long to lose them.

Our next most attractive option was to go to a hotel, but since we estimated that no hotel would welcome a naked man, I decided that we should go to an often deserted little park by the river, supposedly to think of what to do next, but actually I was secretly hoping that Damon would get cold enough to agree to wear the raincoat long enough for us to check into a hotel.

But he didn’t. We stayed in the park for a while. Damon was sitting next to me on the bench, naked and shivering, his teeth chattering, and sometimes crying. Finally, even I was getting cold, and I couldn’t bear to see him frozen, so I thought of another plan.

I decided to take him to Stress Less Step, a massage parlor close by, which I learned, after a quick phone call, stayed open until 10:30 P.M.

The staff at Stress Less Step didn’t make a huge deal out of seeing a naked man walk in, perhaps because anyone walking in would end up naked anyway.

While Damon and I warmed ourselves in the sauna before our massages, we lamented the fact that he had not worn a mitten instead of a glove at the dinner; it would have made so much more sense, on every level, even with regards to the birth defect excuse. I then tried to soothe him, stroking his hair and speaking comforting words, in the heat, while my teeth burned.

After our massages, my masseuse came out and told Damon, in front of me, that I had been very tense. Then his masseuse, who overheard her, said “You don’t know what tense is unless you’ve done him. I wasn’t able to loosen a single knot.”

I was sorry to hear this, because I had hoped that Damon might now be relaxed enough to wear the raincoat to a hotel. I asked him, just in case, and the answer was no. But then he nudged me, looking at the reception desk. He was motioning toward the curtain that hung behind the desk and that covered the window looking out on the street. It was made of white lace. It was ample.

“Lace?” I said. “It’s not exactly the same.”

“It’ll do,” he whispered. “It has holes everywhere. It’s like being naked.”

I went up to the receptionist and asked him if we could buy or rent his curtain; that it was of utmost importance, and that we were willing to pay any price and to return it tomorrow or even later this evening. The man eyed Damon, and then agreed, as if understanding the purpose of my request. He asked for a large deposit, three-fourths of which he would give back to us upon the return of the curtain. The withheld portion would be used to dry clean the curtain, he said.

As he was unhooking it, I asked him where the nearest hotel was. He told us it was the Regency, around the corner.

Damon wrapped himself in the curtain and we walked down the street in this fashion to the Regency Hotel. We never got to find out if the Regency would allow us to check in, for the doorman wouldn’t let us through. So we kept walking, hoping to come upon another hotel. We did: the Pierre. This time we would be sly.

Damon stayed outside, out of sight, while I went inside and checked us in. Then I fetched him, and we were able to get in without anything worse than glares.

It was a relief to finally be alone in a room with his impractical nudity. We sat on the bed and hugged and commiserated. We went to bed early.

The next morning, while Damon waited in our hotel room for what was supposed to be only a short time, I went to my apartment building to fetch his transparent clothes. To my surprise, my parents were there, keeping watch outside my building, with real, lethal antique swords at their waists.

“How long have you been waiting here?” I asked them.

“Since yesterday,” said my mother.

“Don’t you have anything better to do with your lives?” I walked into the building, and they followed me.

“No,” answered my father, climbing the stairs after me. “We have nothing better to do than to save our daughter, who has lost her mind. We want an explanation. Why did you bring your own kidnapper to dinner?”

“I love him.”

“You love him? But he kidnapped you!”

“Well, now I love him.”

“Why?” asked my mother.

“Because he’s great.”

“But he kidnapped you!” repeated my father.

“Well, I kidnapped him too,” I said, unlocking the door to my apartment. “So now we’re even. I kept him in a cage and I fell in love with him. I got to see him living. And I got to find out about his tragic past.”

My father forced his way into my apartment, and said, “No past can justify what he did to you. And how remarkable can one’s way of living be, in a cage?”

“Not remarkable. He was human and enchanting.”

I took Damon’s transparent outfits out of the closet: his shirt and pants, and the gown he had made for himself. My mother grabbed them from me, said to my father, “Look, it’s his clothes,” and held the shirt by its shoulders, letting it hang in front of her. My father took his sword out of its holder and slashed the shirt to shreds, and then held the pants while my mother did the same to them and then to the gown.

This was a problem and a drag. There was only one thing left for me to do. I left my apartment and walked to the nearby fabric shop. It was a bridal fabric shop, which I entered with my parents at my heels, their hands on their swords, like guards.

For a variety of reasons, ranging from the fact that there was a generous selection of lace, that the translucent silk there was not very thin nor very translucent, and that Damon had seemed to enjoy the holes in the curtain tremendously, I decided to buy lace instead of silk. I was attracted to one roll of lace in particular, called “embroidered tulle scallop lace.” I read the label: $13.50 per yard, imported, made of polyester and rayon. It was off-white, supple, satiny, and very see-through due to the fact that much of it consisted of tulle and not of embroidery. The little embroidery there was formed a pattern of birds.

I asked the salesperson if there happened to be an employee in the shop who might be interested in immediately sewing a rough, basic outfit for a six-foot-three male. The person I was talking to was willing to do it for a good deal of money and said it could be ready in an hour.

I was relieved that my parents didn’t grab the whole roll of lace and slash it to bits. I went to a pay phone outside with the intention of calling Damon and telling him why I was taking so long, but after I dialed the first three digits of the Pierre Hotel, I realized my parents were on either side of me, watching me like hawks, ready to pounce on the opportunity to find out where Damon was. I hung up the receiver, feeling sad that he would be wondering, all naked and fragile, where I was.

I had to take more drastic measures or my parents would follow me to the Pierre. I went back to my apartment, still followed by my parents, and grabbed my pepper spray. I also took my antique sword — the present from Damon — which had allowed me to escape from him and would now allow me to rejoin him safely.

Just as I was about to leave, the phone rang. It was Damon, wondering what was taking me so long. I was ecstatic to hear from him.

“My parents slashed your clothes,” I explained. “I had to go and have an outfit made for you, and now they won’t leave me alone, so I came back home to get weapons. I won’t be much longer.”

My parents grabbed the phone from me and insulted Damon and tried to find out where he was. I threatened them with my spray and got the receiver back. I told him I’d see him as soon as I managed to ditch them. When I hung up, my mother tried to trace the call, but without success.

I left my apartment. They followed me.

I had half an hour to kill before Damon’s costume would be ready, so I sat in a café. My parents pulled up chairs and sat at my table. I didn’t bother using the weapons on them quite yet, since they knew I was headed back to the fabric store anyway.

They tried to make me regain my senses. They threatened to have me kidnapped by a cult-deprogrammer.

Finally, the half hour was killed, and I got the outfit from the tailor in the fabric shop. My parents immediately tried to take it from me. I threatened them with the pepper spray. They drew their swords. I drew mine. I backed out of the shop. The salespeople stared.

It suddenly dawned on me that perhaps I should consider getting a bodyguard. I was, after all, a star. And I could afford one. A bodyguard who would carry a sword around and fight my parents on their own miserable level.

I hailed a cab and shook my weapons at my father, preventing him from getting in with me. “I’m twenty-eight years old!” I shouted. “Leave me alone! I can do what I want!”

He hailed another cab and hopped into it with my mother. They sped after me. This time it took a while to ditch them, their driver being more skilled than mine.

I eventually went back to the Pierre Hotel and gave Damon the precious outfit. He liked it, and it suited him well, although it looked even more strange than his usual costume of translucent white silk.

When I told him all the trouble I had had with my parents, he grew sad and sullen, but didn’t want to talk about it.

We returned the curtain to Stress Less Step, and that night I decided to take him to dinner at Auréole, a very good nearby restaurant that I hoped would cheer him up. But it didn’t. I asked him again why he seemed so down.

He said, “I think I should leave. I’m causing too many problems in your family.”

“What do you mean: leave?”

“Just for a while. To let things settle down, to let your parents calm down.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary. I’ll talk to my parents. I’m sure I can improve things.”

“I doubt it. And even if you can, it’ll take time. On top of it, there’s a project I’ve been wanting to work on. Unbeknownst to me, what I needed was time to do nothing but think, and my stay in the cage gave me that time. I came up with ideas. And then our last few weeks of happiness together inspired me, they opened up my imagination even more. It may sound corny, but they provided me with the poetry I needed to give life and meaning to my ideas. But I’ll miss you.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a month, maybe less, maybe a little more. But we can visit each other, perhaps, after a while, when your parents aren’t stalking you as much.”

That night, in bed with him in the hotel room, I cried.

I hoped that by the next day he would have changed his mind. But he didn’t. When we had lunch, he seemed even more depressed than the night before. He said he was sad to be leaving, especially at a time like this, and that he would miss me. He wasn’t even sure he’d be able to concentrate on his work.

“Then don’t go. Or let me go too.”

“Your parents would suffer. This is really the best thing to do, for now. I’m sure you can see that.” He was speaking in a whisper, his head bowed over his plate, and I almost expected to see tears splatter into his soup. In his lace, he was beautiful and foolish-looking at once.

I could take it no longer. I said, “Damon, I saw your brother.”

He slowly lifted his face and gazed at me stunned, so I went on: “I met him, I spoke to him, and I know all about your past.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“When was this?” he asked, his tone growing urgent.

“That time I went to L.A. Before I freed you.”

“How is he?”

“He’s fine.”

“What did he say about me? Does he still hate me?”

“No. Never has.”

“But he hasn’t wanted to see me in years.”

“I know.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me you saw him?”

I was hurt by his tone, but understood it. “I didn’t want it to affect what was happening between us. I’m sorry. I meant to tell you, so many times, but I didn’t want it to change things. We were so happy.”

“You were selfish.”

“Yes, for both of us.”

“No, not for me. I would have appreciated knowing.”

After a long silence, he added, “And that’s why you came into my cage.”

“Yes.”

“You felt sorry for me.”

“No. I mean, of course I felt sorry for you, but that’s not why I came in. It’s because your past gave me an excuse to forgive you. And I did want an excuse. I had been wanting one for a long time.”

“I can’t blame you for being selfish and keeping this from me. At first you were more selfless with me than I deserved.”

“I hope you’ll still feel that way after I tell you that your brother wants to resume contact with you. I’m sure it’s something you would have wanted to know sooner. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right away.”

I never saw Damon so surprised and excited. “Are you sure? Did he actually say it or are you assuming?”

“He said it. His words were, ‘Tell Damon I want to resume contact. Maybe it’ll help him regain some of his sanity.’ The reason he added that last part was because I told him you had kidnapped me and all that.”

Damon insisted that we pay for the bill right then, before we had finished our lunch, so he could go back to our hotel room and call his brother.

I offered to wait in the lobby to give him privacy while he talked on the phone, but he said he no longer wanted to hide any part of his life from me.

He was able to reach Philip at home, and they talked for about half an hour, catching up on the last eight years of their lives. He told Philip he’d been watching him on The Bold and the Beautiful every day, and then added, “Oh, she told you already.” He also told him about his invention of small clouds, and that he was trying to make them solid. “You’ll have to see them,” he said. Finally, he told Philip that we were in love, and then he laughingly informed him that I had kept him in a cage until just a few weeks ago. At that point Damon handed me the receiver; Philip wanted to speak to me.

“So,” said Philip, “you didn’t tell me you had my brother locked up while you came to visit me.”

I chuckled.

He quickly added, “I’m very happy for the both of you, and I hope you’ll come and visit me again. And don’t tell him you threw me off the diving board or he might get jealous.”

I laughed.

Damon discussed with Philip his plan to fly out to L.A. that evening to visit him.

As soon as he hung up, Damon made love to me, adoringly and cheerfully.

Then he wanted to go to Bloomingdale’s.

“Why?” I asked.

“I can’t keep wearing this outfit; it’s too embarrassing, this lace.”

“But I don’t think they have transparent clothes for men there.”

“I’m sure I’ll manage to find something better than this.”

“I doubt it,” I said.

At Bloomingdale’s, he headed for the men’s department, on the main floor, where there was not the slightest piece of transparent clothing in sight. I knew; I had searched before.

But Damon didn’t look around. He went straight to the turtleneck department and grabbed a very opaque, dark blue one. I looked at that piece of opaque clothing as if he had lost his mind and was handling a very dangerous material that he was highly allergic to and that could have disastrous consequences when handled improperly, like how a nut is, for people allergic to nuts. He took off his lace shirt with almost as much eagerness as he had taken off his clothes for my parents two days ago. He donned the hazardous turtleneck.

He then grabbed a pair of pants from a rack, took off the turtleneck and handed both items to the salesman in order to pay for them. The salesman eyed his bare chest, and mumbled some kind of disapproving comment like, “The store doesn’t approve of improper attire.”

“I understand,” said Damon. “Forgive me.” And Damon put the shirt back on as soon as he had bought it.

He then took off his lace pants, and for a few seconds was completely naked from the waist down, which caused the salesman to loudly say, “Excuse me sir, this is absolutely unacceptable in this store. If you don’t put your clothes back on this instant, I will call security, and action will be taken against you, which I can assure you will not be pleasant. You will be punished according to the policy of our store, which consists in being deprived of your privilege to return your purchases for a full refund.”

By the time the man had finished talking, Damon had finished putting on his new opaque pants. I took his lace clothes out of the wastebasket where he had deposited them. I thought this was wise, in case of clothing intolerance or a delayed allergic reaction.

But I wasn’t around him long enough to find out. We embraced each other — he passionately, me tearfully — and he was off to L.A.