Subtle Bodies (25 page)

This was a poem he wasn’t going to finish. He dropped the pages.

48
Nina woke up and saw that Ned was getting dressed. She watched. It would be more accurate to say that he was getting dressed and re-dressed. She didn’t know if it was a mania, exactly, but he was in some state completely new to her regarding the way he looked. He had collected and laid out different elements to choose from for the outfit he was going to present himself in today. It was very strange. He had assembled a collection of shirts gotten presumably from Joris and Elliot, maybe some of Douglas’s, from Iva—Gruen’s shirts wouldn’t fit Ned—and one shirt that he needn’t have bothered with, a pale floral print. He must have been out scouring the world for shirts since sunrise.

The radio was on, low. She concentrated. It was the local news.

She said, “Me oh my, another pedophile running a summer camp, apparently the woods are full of them.”

She thought, There is no handbook on the subject of how you help people who are acting crazy.

It was only seven and Ned had showered and shaved. Ned was someone who needed to wash his hair every day and he hadn’t been doing that. His curly hair looked vital when it had just been washed, not electrical exactly, but springing up and lively and nice. He had shaved hard, which is what he called shaving scrupulously and not in his usual nominal way. He was turning his head from side to side in front of the mirror over the chest of drawers, so he could check his gleaming cheeks.

The tie he was holding up against the front of an unfamiliar tan shirt was one she had seen Joris wear. It was purple. He would never wear it.

The house was full of nuts, by which she meant that somebody kept refilling the little bowls of cashews and almonds etcetera distributed around the common rooms. Men loved nuts. Ned was munching them all day there. He’s gained a little weight, she thought, in this house. Ma had given her a piece of advice she had paid attention to, but she could only put it into effect when she was in control of the eating environment. It was: restrict the kinds of nuts you keep in your house to the kind in shells so they can’t be consumed by the fistful, because cracking them constitutes an obstacle that keeps consumption down and makes noise so you can always rush in from someplace else in the house when you hear it and distract your husband with a stick of celery.

Ned said, “I like this.”

Nina said, “It shits. You are not going to appear in a purple tie! The black one is perfect. It’s perfect for a funeral. You like the purple one because it’s matte, and you think the black one is too shiny for a proletarian like you,
but this is a funeral
, Mister Bakunin.”

He said, “Okay, then. This is going to be it.” He had gotten into the black jeans he’d brought with him. Someone on the staff had pressed them to a fare-thee-well. He slipped his borrowed black suit jacket on and for some reason draped the black tie in an X across his chest, signifying that it was provisional. He inhaled and held his breath while she graded him. Men always do that, she thought.

“You look marvelous,” she said, realizing just after the fact that she was resurrecting a tag line from
Saturday Night
Live
and her long durance vile with Bob. She thanked whatever gods may be that she hadn’t said it with the ellipses between the three words that made the phrase comical, or pronounced the “mar” in marvelous as “mah.”

“Okay then,” he said again.

She didn’t really like the way he was sounding. It was tight. Or it was going from tight to less tight through sheer self-control. It was her opinion that life should feel like something other than falling down an endless flight of stairs. Maybe a solid breakfast would help him. He’d only eaten a little rice and eggplant for dinner.

She said, “In my role as warden of your public self, I want to see your nails.”

He came toward her, the backs of his hands held out. His nails were clipped. She liked his hands.

“How am I?” he asked.

“You’re darling.”

“No, you know what I mean.”

“You are completely fine. But you need to relax. In fact, why don’t you do the breathing exercise you’re always, well not always, occasionally, telling me to do, in and out, out and hold, that one.”

She threw the covers back while Ned performed the breathing exercise.

When he spoke to her he sounded worse. He said, “By the way, just so you know, the celebrities are all eating their meals separately, not with us in the mess hall.”

“They are?”

“Yes, and there’s a Nazi hunter in the house. Not Wiesenthal but his deputy or somebody. Gruen will want to talk to him, but won’t be in the same room, malheureusement. Jacques is affecting my life.”

Nina said, “What about that poem. Was the poem any good?”

Ned sighed heavily. “I can’t use it. I’ll thank him, though.”

He said, “I feel like kissing you. I could never kiss Claire in the morning until she’d brushed her teeth.”

“
I beg you not to bring her up unnecessarily
. I
beg
you.”

“Right.”

Nina said, “I think that shirt’s fine because it’s good quality, but I have to get cuff links somewhere. Somebody will have some.”

49
Ned’s mind was everywhere. He hadn’t decided on what he was going to do re the memorial. Keep smiling, he thought.

He had eaten more for breakfast than he’d intended to, at Nina’s urging. Gruen appeared next to him at the coffee urn. He was looking for Nina and Ned explained that she had gone to find a bathroom without a line in front of it and cuff links.

Gruen asked, “Have you seen the program?”

Ned shook his head. Gruen said, “Well, we’re not on it by name. We’re in a segment called, quite simply,
Voices
!”

“No kidding. But I’m not surprised. Yes I am, actually. And may I say
you
look nice.”

Gruen was wearing a black cardigan and Ned wanted to tell him he should unbutton it because it was too tight on him, but there was no point in that. It would just make him uncomfortable and the borrowed shirt was probably too tight, too. His black tie wasn’t shiny and he had gotten
decent unconspicuous cuff links to close his French cuffs. If Nina didn’t find something he’d borrow a stapler and shut the flapping things with that. He looked around at the crowd disconsolately. He asked Gruen if he’d met any interesting guests lately. “There are thousands to choose from,” Ned said.

Supposedly Nina had gone to scout out someplace at one of the tables but he saw that instead she was engaged in conversation with frère Jacques. Joris was not in evidence, and Gruen had lost track of him. The media component of the crowd had swollen and Ned was seeing faces now and then that were faintly familiar.

“Doesn’t this make you feel minor?” Ned asked Gruen, who shrugged.

“I have to get Nina. Are those your cuff links?” Ned asked.

“No, I got them from Joris. He brought a couple of pairs, but he’s using the others.”

“Where’s the nearest stapler, do you suppose?” Ned said.

Gruen said, “I’m going to make a scrambled egg sandwich on one of those delicious rolls. I’ll scoop the eggs off the top because on the bottom they’re dried out. I’ll make you one if you want. I was about to say we can eat standing up, but there’s room for three or four at that table.”

“I’ve eaten, but Nina hasn’t. We’ll sit with you. Let me go detach her from the French,” Ned said. Ned forged his way to Nina’s side.

Jacques looked particularly unkempt. He had shaved carelessly and what looked like popped white stitching ran along the rim of his lower lip. Earlier Ned had seen Nina draw a circle with her finger around her own lips, which had
made Ned nervous, but now it was clear that what she had been doing was innocent, of course. Jacques was wearing a black tee shirt and for some reason a black headband.

They all sat down with Gruen. Jacques served the coffee. It was pleasant.

Somebody had to find Joris.

50
Nina asked Ned where else they should go to look for Joris. They’d asked Iva, who’d had no idea. They’d sensed something odd in Iva’s manner, since the day before—a sea change, a suggestion of jubilance.

Elliot had nothing to impart about Joris’s whereabouts, and he, also, had seemed distinctly more relaxed. Nina was puzzled. Ned couldn’t think about it that much because he needed to talk to her about his encomium problem, and immediately.

They were standing behind the manse in a spot Nina liked. It was beside a hillock with a young cedar on top. It was fragrant there.

He had asked her earlier if he looked okay and she had said that he looked perfect, very funereal, and had reminded him to stand up straight and
keep
standing up straight. The cuff links he was wearing were courtesy of the excellent Nadine Rose.

The line
His mind more jury than judge
came to him from someplace in world literature. He told Nina that he still couldn’t decide what he was going to talk about at the memorial.

“I realize that, and I wish you’d come up with an outline at least. I’m afraid you have in your head the idea that
you’re going to approach this with nothing in your mind but a great cloud of unknowing and that out of that is going to come inspiration and some perfect utterance. Well, maybe … anyway, this doesn’t start until four thirty, so we have plenty of time, if you want my help.”

“I could start with, say, A toast to Zeus, the protector of friendships.” He waited for her reply. She was going to be kind.

Nina said, “I think … you can do better. Zeus is kind of embarrassing.”

Ned wanted to go someplace else, but he didn’t know where. Nina was always trying to help him and he appreciated it. She thought he was too easy on his staff at work, Derek in particular. He remembered what she’d said, mocking him, when she’d been urging him to get on Derek’s case: Um, Derek, if you’re not busy, may I bother you for a minute to ask could you maybe try and be at least a little bit less half-assed now and then in the future?

He liked being around the hillock with the cedar and he realized it reminded him of the last scene in
The Seven Samurai
with the burial mounds of the three dead heroes marked with their swords.

Earlier they had seen a hearse parked in front of the manse, delivering Douglas’s ashes. The sense that they were witnessing the evolution of a gigantic machine came over Ned. A vast party tent had been erected.

Nina took his hand. She said, “I want you to promise me that if you’re ever depressed you’ll tell me.”

“What’s this about?”

“Nothing, I just wanted to say that. I don’t want you to … I don’t know.”

They decided to walk down and inspect the tent.

Nina said, “And promise me you’ll forget about toasts. What will you do, hold up an imaginary glass? This isn’t a banquet …”

“I’m not arguing, you notice.”

Nina said, “Your friend David is very smart and they should have made
him
talk about Douglas’s philosophy, so called, not you. Do you know what he said about Douglas? He said Douglas’s mind was for bizarro ideas what a belfry is for bats.”

“That isn’t entirely fair. Anyway …” He trailed off. “I want to say something substantive.”

He felt like embracing her, so he did. They leaned against one another and it was pleasant in the breeze, in the sun. He was thinking that in the future somebody was going to be designated to do for him something like what he was supposed to do for Douglas. If that happened anytime soon it would be too soon. He had more to do with his life.

51
Nina was feeling acutely that she had to guide him and leave him alone at the same time. She could well imagine him crafting something that would relate heavily to his own faults as a friend. He was subject to guilt, attacks of it. He could also come up with the most far fucking fetched candidates for empathy, like an old friend who had circulated a hostile, invented, story involving them, to their astonishment. But Ned felt sorry for her
because of the guilt he was certain she must feel!
—so he wouldn’t mortify her by making an issue of it.

And
now
he was wracking his brain for a way to publicly praise his friend, his old friend, the monstrous Douglas.

Outside the tent were ranks of folding chairs. Ned decided to borrow two of them. He carried the chairs down the slope past the death gorge and set them up in an odd enclosure. Someone had created a rough circle of corkscrew topiary boxwood plants in wooden tubs. They were doubtless destined to be moved to some less inscrutable location, but for now, it amused him to sit down with Nina in this askew setting.