Middle Age (61 page)

It was then that Spires tried to heave himself up from his chair, or made a sudden defensive gesture as if imagining, or pretending to imagine, that Volpe was going to hit him; and Volpe mistook the gesture, or pretended to mistake it, as offensive, and struck out at him with astonishing quickness, using the edges of both hands simultaneously. This must have been a martial arts move, though one not known to Roger. He saw Spires catch Volpe’s fast-flying blows on both sides of his fatty neck, saw the look of astonishment and pain on Spires’s face and heard him whimper, like air rapidly escaping from a balloon. Spires spilled sideways out of his chair grabbing at the edge of a desk and pulling over with him to the floor a cascade of documents, plastic cups and containers. On the floor, Spires sat like an upright baby whale, red-faced and panting. “Go away.

Just
go away,
” he whispered.

Volpe would have replied, but Roger prudently touched the young woman’s shoulder and drew her away. Without another word they left Spires’s office. “No need to assault the poor bastard,” Roger said, laughing.

“Let him sue,” Volpe said furiously, “I’m not ashamed of hitting him.
He’s
the one who deserves lethal injection, not Jackson.” Roger said, as you might placate a vicious dog, “Don’t worry, Volpe. I’m the sole witness to the assault, and I’m yours.”

A    with “Boomer” Spires, Naomi Volpe was hot-skinned as if sunburnt. Too restless to sit quietly in Roger’s car. Could they

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stop for a drink? “Sure,” Roger said. “I could use a drink, too.” The rat’s nest, repugnant to enter, would become an adventure to recount. A shared adventure. Cavanagh and Volpe were now incensed comrades. Cruelly they laughed at the defeated enemy. “Fuck that asshole,” Naomi Volpe said loudly, not caring that others might overhear, “can you believe that asshole! And the size of him. Call himself a man if that’s what he calls himself, I wanted to laugh in his face. That size, a guy’s got a prick this size.”

Volpe raised the smallest finger of her right hand. “Ask me, I
know
.” The furrows in Volpe’s forehead deepened. Her ferret-eyes glittered meanly.

The smudged, triangular face seemed to Roger attractive, in the half-light of a barroom somewhere in Jersey. Roger liked it that the paralegal could get so worked up in a common cause. After a few beers and a cigarette or two he thought it touching, a sign of Volpe’s loyalty, that she should be on his side, when no one was on his side, her fury directed at someone beside himself. He’d signed on as a volunteer for the Project to make his daughter respect him and if Robin didn’t come to respect him at least he’d given her grounds for respect and maybe he could respect himself. The Project had been one of Adam Berendt’s causes. It was a damned good cause. If Naomi Volpe was associated with the Project, she was a woman to respect.

When they left the tavern it was dark, and dark felt good. You could get too much of daylight. You could get too much of sobriety. They’d lost track of time, but who cared. It was too late to return to East th Street for sure. As Roger drove, looking for a way back to the interstate, Naomi Volpe continued to speak hotly, passionately. She was leaning forward in her seat, the safety belt unbuckled. At a traffic light Roger noticed her picking at her face; in the bar, she’d been picking at her face; it was a nervous, angry gesture, a mannerism of Robin’s, prodding blemishes in her skin and picking with her fingernails until sometimes she drew blood.

Roger reached out to catch hold of Volpe’s hand and pulled it away from her face. “Hey. Don’t.” It was the first time he’d touched her so intimately.

Volpe stared at Roger, and smiled. She drew her hand out of his. They were both aroused, breathing quickly. Roger touched her face, and her spiky hair. Naomi leaned forward to kiss him, a hard quick kiss like a bite.

Did Roger imagine it, or did the barbaric little nose ring brush against his skin? Desire flooded him like molten wax. He hadn’t been with a woman sexually in memory. He fumbled to grip Volpe’s narrow, hard-muscled shoulders like a man grabbing to save himself from drowning. He kissed her in return, with feeling. They laughed, breathless. “Why’re you angry
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with me, Naomi? I’m on your side,” Roger said. Volpe grabbed at Roger’s hair with both fists. “Nobody’s on my side, Mr. C.”

Roger drove into a dead-end street of warehouses, a trainyard. He had no idea where he was. Already Naomi Volpe was tugging at his sport coat, at his white cotton shirt, crushing the material in her fingers as if wanting to tear it.



He was driving somewhere in snow
.

A snowy mountain road? The air was heightened and clear as glass
.

Through a stand of evergreens a lighted window glowed
.
He had the power to
see at a distance
.
Or maybe he had a telescope
. . .
There was the red
-
haired
young woman in the window, passing by the window, her pale grave face and
long tangled red hair illuminated
.
She was the woman he loved and yet she
could not see him
—
could she?

He called, Marina!

He stared, and the woman was shutting the window against him
.
Shutting
a louvered blind
.

He wakened, in his bed in Salthill, sexually aroused and ashamed.

N  he telephoned Naomi Volpe at Project headquarters.

She put him on hold.



C ! It seemed to Roger the behavior of another era, the s.

He’d never been “involved” with a woman the way he became involved with Naomi Volpe, though Lee Ann had accused him. Roger was more traditional, more romantic, possessive. He wanted sex to
mean something
.

He couldn’t have said exactly what it should mean but he knew it should
mean something
. It wasn’t that he was in love with Naomi Volpe but he felt that she should be in love with him. At least, she should be susceptible to loving him. For his part, he wanted to feel protective toward her. He wanted to feel tenderness, affection. This was only normal, wasn’t it? He’d

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entered her tight, frantic little body and he’d made love to her, unless it was only that he’d fucked her (“fuck” was a word Volpe uttered as casually as another might murmur “Well” or “Uh”), but he’d impressed her, he’d caused her to feel something, he was sure, and that was important—

wasn’t it?

In all, Roger and Naomi Volpe would make love less than a dozen times that fall, winter. Their relationship wasn’t a love affair exactly, yet not a friendship. Volpe seemed bored by intimacy. Unlike any other woman with whom Roger had been romantically involved, she showed little interest in “intimate” exchange. She was physically restless, and in Roger’s embrace, if they weren’t actively making love, he could feel her thoughts churn. She talked a good deal, on her feet, but not in bed, and at no time did she encourage Roger to talk about himself, after their initial conversation about Robin; the next time Roger brought up the subject, to him fascinating and obsessive, of his “demonic” daughter, Naomi Volpe scarcely listened. Talking of Elroy Jackson, Jr., Volpe showed true animation. She was angry on behalf of the condemned man, she spoke bitterly of the “enemy”—the “white prosecutors.” (Even when technically black-skinned, prosecutors were in thrall to the white élite.) Roger saw that Naomi Volpe was an impassioned hater, but an indifferent lover. Their sexual liaisons, scattered and unpredictable at least by Roger, seemed to begin with outbursts of bad temper on Volpe’s part. (For a woman who aligned herself vociferously with the underclass, Volpe liked expensive restaurants. Her only requirement was that they were “downtown,” which included Union Square.)

They made love a number of times in Volpe’s rowhouse apartment in Jersey City, where it wasn’t clear whether Roger was, or was not, invited to stay the night or didn’t wish to, being eager to get away and back to Salthill for a morning in his office on Shaker Square. Sometimes, alone in the office on East th, and overcome by desire, they made love on a sofa there, as many times as Volpe could eke out of forty-eight-year-old Roger Cavanagh. The more pissed Volpe was with the injustice of the world, the more urgent her sexual need. She sank her fingers into Roger’s hair, clutched and groaned and bucked beneath him, locking her ankles at the small of his back. He was made to worry, upon more than one occasion, about throwing out his back: this was sex a little too young for him, sex as aerobics, acrobatics. Not that he’d complain! Kisses were snaky-quick little bites. Sometimes lovemaking came too suddenly, for such safety precau-Middle Age: A Romance

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tions as condoms—“No. Never mind. I’m on the pill. Come
on
.” Roger was sexually flattered, winded, and confounded. He was hurt, resentful.

He would have been alarmed if the paralegal had begun telephoning him in Salthill, or left e-mail messages or notes for him at Project headquarters, but he was subtly insulted that she didn’t do these things; if she told Roger she couldn’t see him, she had an engagement with someone else, whether the “friend” was female or male Roger felt a stab of jealousy though knowing, of course he knew, that Volpe was a purely contemporary type, not promiscuous but amoral, indifferent to romantic conventions as she was indifferent to conventions of female makeup and attire. It couldn’t be said that Naomi Volpe was “unfaithful” to Roger because the concept of

“faithful” would have struck her as hilarious, or obscene. Roger told himself yes, he felt the same way.

Like hell you do
.
You want her to adore your prick
.
Above all others
.
Till
death do you part
.

True, Roger was pissed off when he called Naomi Volpe—a paralegal!—and she neglected to return his call. When, meeting up with her in the Project’s offices, she scarcely glanced at him, smirked as she murmured, “H’lo, Mr. C.! Nice tie.”
Is she laughing at me? But why?
He behaved cordially with her, coolly. He kept his distance. No one in the office could have guessed they were—sometimes—lovers. (
Was
that what they were?) Roger was incensed when Volpe put him off with a vague explanation that she had “other plans” for the evening. If Lee Ann should discover this! If Roger’s Salthill friends should know! He felt the injustice of being so treated, by a woman of no special attractions with a smudged skin, a ring in her nose, a gravelly voice; a woman who merely assisted lawyers on the staff, and should have been grateful that one of them took an interest in her.

He had to wonder: was Volpe a lesbian?

He had to wonder: who were her other lovers?

He couldn’t bring himself to discuss such things with her. He would not have wished her to know he was thinking of her in such a way; or that he was thinking of her much at all. From remarks she let fall he gathered she was bisexual—“At least in theory.” (This was heartening: Volpe preferred men? The penis?) One evening over drinks she spoke of the “occult power” of fetishes. She said, “Everyone is a fetishist, except most don’t know it. They haven’t yet discovered their fetish. It’s like your blood type, Mr. C! Before you’re informed, you could be said to be ‘innocent’ of that

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knowledge, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have a blood type that’s verifi-able.”

Roger was struck by this. He, a fetishist!

Bullshit. He was a thoroughly normal heterosexual male.

He said, “So what’s your fetish, Naomi?”

“ ‘Volpe,’ please call me. I’ve asked you.”

“
That’s
your fetish, not being ‘Naomi’? Why?”

Volpe looked startled. Her forehead creased in discomfort. Accustomed to asking questions, she wasn’t good at answering questions. Nervously she said, “Mr. C, it’s late. I think I’ll take a train home tonight.

Good night!”

In sexual thrall
. But he wasn’t, yet. Not to Naomi Volpe.



W’  R C to this impasse? Who but his friend Adam.

As Adam’s executor, Roger had discovered a file of documents and clippings relating to the National Project to Free the Innocent. He’d been impressed that Adam had left $, to the organization, and he remembered a conversation he’d had with Adam a few months before Adam’s death in which his friend had expressed the wish that he’d gone to law school, had a law degree, so he could “help fight injustice.” Roger said dryly, “You think that’s what lawyers do, Adam? Fight ‘injustice’?”

“Yes. Some lawyers.”

Roger, smiling hard, felt the sting of his friend’s remark.

Fuck you, Berendt
.
Life isn’t that simple
.

It was nonlawyers who idealized the law, Roger thought. If anyone idealized it. To the lawyer, the law is pragmatic as a subway map. It’s a function, a use. To get to X, you take a specific route. If you never wish to get to X (if you’ve made Y your life’s work) you need never glance at the route to X. You may be aware that X exists, but it doesn’t exist in relationship to you.

Adam had gone on to speak of “injustices” of which he’d become aware, the disproportionate number of black men on death row in the United States, the likelihood that innocent men were being executed by
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the state, possibly Adam had even spoken of Elroy Jackson, Jr., to his shame Roger wouldn’t remember, afterward. He’d been feeling defensive.

He’d been annoyed by Adam’s naive indignation. You can’t be confronted with another’s idealism without wishing to refute it and if you can’t refute it, you deny it; you do your best to forget it.

After Adam’s death, when Roger began to discover surprising things about his friend (the size and variety of Adam’s financial investments, for instance; the mysterious absence of family, relatives) he came to see that