Very Old Bones (22 page)

“I think you are probably at this moment,” I said, “the most fucksome woman on this planet.”

“What an exciting word,” Giselle said.

I opened her robe and peeled it away from her shoulders. The perfection in the placement of a mole on her right breast all but moved me to tears. She stood before me in her nightgown, beige, the
color of pleasure, and as I kissed her I eased her backward onto the sofa, and knelt beside her. I put my hands on the outside of her thighs and slid her nightgown upward. She raised her hips, an
erotic elevation to ease my task, and revealed the bloom of a single yellow rose, rising in all its beauty from the depths of her secret garden.

“Are there thorns on this rose?” I asked.

“I eliminated them,” Giselle said.

“You are the most resourceful woman on this planet.”

“Am I?”

“You are. Did Quinn ever tell you you were resourceful?”

“Never. Say the word.”

“Resourceful?”

“The other word.”

“Ah, you mean fucksome.”

“Yes. I like that word. Don’t get any thorns in your mouth.”

“I thought you said there were no thorns.”

“I don’t think I missed any.”

“Did Quinn ever have to worry about thorns?”

“Never. Shhhhh.”

Silence prevailed.

“Aaaahhhh.”

“Was that the first?”

“Yes.”

Silence prevailed again.

“Aaaahhhh.”

“Was that the second?”

“Yes.”

Silence prevailed yet again.

“Aaaahhhh. Aaaahhhh.”

“Third and fourth?”

“Yes. Say the word.”

“Fourth?”

“No. Fucksome. Say fucksome.”

“I’d rather you say it.”

“Does your stripper say it for you?”

“Never.”

“Is your stripper fucksome?”

“Somewhat.”

“Do you tell her she’s somewhat fucksome?”

“Never.”

“Why are you still wearing your suit?”

“It’s my new glen plaid. I thought you liked it.”

“I do, but you never wear a suit when you make love.”

“This is the new Orson. Natty to a fault.”

“I want to go onto the bed.”

“A sensational idea. Then we can do something else.”

“Exactly. Are you going to keep your glen plaid on?”

“Yes, it makes me feel fuckish.”

“Another word.”

“Do you like it?”

“Somewhat. I think I prefer fucksome.”

“They have different meanings.”

“Does your stripper make you feel fuckish?”

“Somewhat.”

“Have you told her?”

“Never. What does Quinn say that you make him feel?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“I think I’ll take my suit off.”

“I prefer it that way. It makes me feel fucksome.”

“You mean fuckish.”

“I prefer fucksome.”

“Language isn’t a matter of preference.”

“Mine is.”

Silence prevailed again.

“Is this better?”

“Much better. And a better view.”

“How would you describe the view?”

“Classic in shape.”

“Classic. Now that’s something.”

“And larger than most.”

“Larger than most. That’s
really
something, coming from you.”

“It also looks extremely useful.”

“You are a very fucksome woman, Giselle.”

“Fucksome is as fucksome does,” Giselle said.

Giselle and I walked along 57th Street and down Broadway, a change of scenery, a move into the murderous light of eschatological love and sudden death. I had convinced her
after five hours of lovemaking that the walking was necessary to rejuvenate our bodies for the next encounter. Master the hiatus, I said, and you will regain the season. I did not tell her where I
was taking her. I told her the story of Meriwether Macbeth, protagonist of the memoir I was putting together from a chaotic lifetime of journals, notes, stories, poetry, letters, my task being to
create the quotient of one man’s verbal life.

“He lived with a woman who called herself Jezebel Jones, a name she adopted after meeting Meriwether,” I said. “She was a slut of major calibration, but quite bright and
extremely willful; and together she and Meriwether cut a minor public swath through Greenwich Village for the better part of a decade. She was known for bringing home strangers and creating yet
another ménage for Meriwether, who had grown bored with Jezebel’s solitary charms. She turned up one night with a hunchback who called himself Lon because his hump was said to look
very like the hump Lon Chaney wore in
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
, and Jezebel found the deformed Lon enormously appealing. But it turned out Lon was a virgin, a neuter, who had never craved
the sexual life, was content to move through his days without expending sperm on other citizens. Jezebel tried to change this by teaching the game to Lon and his lollipop. She enlisted
Meriwether’s aid when Lon visited their apartment, and Meriwether, through deviousness, bound Lon’s hands with twine, then tied Lon’s legs to the bedposts as Jezebel, having
unsuited the hunchback, aroused him to spire-like loftiness, and mounted him. Released from bondage, Lon fled into the night, returned the next day with his Doberman, and sicked the dog on Jezebel
and Meriwether. As the dog bit repeatedly into various parts of Jezebel, Meriwether took refuge behind the sofa, his face buried in his arms. Lon moved the sofa and, with the hammer he had brought
with him, crushed Meriwether’s head with a dozen blows. Jezebel survived and provided enough detail of the attack to put Lon into the asylum for life, and Meriwether moved on to a posthumous
realm that had eluded him all his life: fame.”

“This is where I spend a bit of my social life when the world is too much with me,” I said, pulling out bar stools for Giselle and myself.

We were in The Candy Box, a 52nd Street club that featured striptease dancers from 6:00 p.m. till 3:00 a.m. It was eight o’clock and the low-ceilinged room was already full of smoke that
floated miasmically in the club’s bluish light. Four young women in low-cut street dresses sat at the bar, two of them head-to-head with portly cigar smokers. The other two, on the alert for
comparable attention, turned their eyes to us, recognized me, gave me greetings.

I called them by name and sat beside Giselle. On the dance floor, Consuela, a busty platinum blonde, awkwardly unhooked her skirt to the music of a four-piece band, while three other club girls
cozied a table full of men, and another dozen solitary males watched the blonde with perfect attention.

“This is so depressing,” Giselle said. “Do you come here to be depressed?”

“I know the bartender,” I said.

“You know more than the bartender.”

“He’s a friend. He lost his leg at Iwo Jima. A colleague in war, so to speak.”

“And your stripper, she works here?”

“Five nights a week.”

“Are we in luck? Will we get to see her?”

“It turns out we will.”

“Is that her trying to make herself naked up there?”

“No, that’s Consuela, one of the new ones, still a bit of an amateur. My Brenda is a talented stripper.”

“Your Brenda,” said Giselle. “Your behavior is ridiculous, Orson. It’s the way you were back in Germany. You seem to like living in the sewer.”

“Orson the underground man.”

“What’ll you have, Orse old buddy?” the bartender asked. He was tall and muscular, with a space where his left canine tooth used to be, a casualty of a bar fight. But you
should see the other guy’s dental spaces.

“Port wine, Eddie,” I said. “The best you have. Two.”

“Port wine. Don’t get too many calls for that.”

“It’s a romantic drink, Eddie. My wife and I are celebrating our reunion. I brought her in to meet Brenda.”

“Yeah? Now that’s a switch, bringin’ the wife in here. You don’t see much of that either.”

“Wives have a right to know their husbands’ friends,” Giselle said.

“Not a whole lot of husbands buy that idea,” Eddie said.

“It’s trust, Eddie,” I said. “There has to be more trust in this world. Shake hands with Giselle.”

“A pleasure,” Eddie said, taking Giselle’s hand.

“When is Brenda on?” I asked.

“She’s next.”

“We
are
in luck,” Giselle said.

“Eddie, would you ask her to come out and say hello before her act?”

“Right away, old buddy.”

“Eddie is certainly a friendly bartender for a place like this,” Giselle said.

“You should avoid categorical thinking, Giselle. There are no places like this.”

“They’re all over Europe.”

“The Candy Box is different. Trust me.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“Because basically I’m a good person,” I said.

“That’s another reason I married you, but I’ve decided that doesn’t mean I should trust you.”

“In God we trust. All others should be bullwhipped.”

I saw Brenda walking toward us from the back of the club, wrapped in a black dressing gown that covered less than half of her upper significance. On the stage Consuela was removing, as a final
gesture, her minimal loin string, revealing a shaded blur that vanished in the all-but-black light that went with that ultimate moment.

I stood to greet Brenda, her eyes heavily mascaraed, her red lipstick outlined in black, her shining black hair loose to her shoulders. I bussed her cheek, offered her my bar stool, then
introduced her to Giselle as “my good friend Brenda, who has done everything a woman of her profession is ever asked to do by men.”

“And what is your profession, Brenda?” Giselle asked.

“She’s a dancer,” I said.

“I didn’t ask you, I asked Brenda.”

“Is this really your wife, Orson?”

“She really is,” I said. “Isn’t she lovely?”

“I’m a dancer,” Brenda said to Giselle. “What’s your profession, honey?”

“Giselle is a photographer,” I said.

“You take my picture,” Brenda said, “I’ll take yours,” and she parted the skirt of her gown and spread her legs.

“Is that what you’d like me to photograph?” Giselle asked.

“No,” said Brenda. “That’s my camera.”

“She has a sense of humor, your Brenda,” Giselle said.

“She’s had dinner with Juan Perón, she’s stripped for the Prince of Wales. Is there anything you haven’t experienced, Brenda?” I asked.

“True love,” said Brenda. “Men only want my body.”

“What a pity,” said Giselle.

“It’s good for business, is how I look at it,” said Brenda. She stood up from the bar stool. “Business calls me.”

“Happy business,” Giselle said as Brenda left us.

“A lively mind, don’t you think?” I said.

“I’d say her tits were her best feature,” Giselle said.

On stage Brenda worked with a film of herself dancing, and a stage spotlight. The film and her live dance were the same but in the film she was seducing a shadowy male figure. As she removed a
garment on stage the camera moved in for a close-up on the area about to be revealed, then cut away as the stage garment was tossed. The spotlight dimmed progressively as nudity impended, and then
the camera focused in grainy close-up on the parts of Brenda that were illegal in the flesh.

“Clever juxtaposition, isn’t it?” I said. “It was Brenda’s own idea.”

“Two Brendas for the price of one,” Giselle said.

I turned my back to Brenda’s performance and faced Giselle. “I have something I must tell you,” I said.

“Don’t you want to see how Brenda comes out?”

“I know how Brenda comes out. My editor didn’t buy my book, he rejected it. The money I spent belonged to your friendly editor from
Life.
I took two of his checkbooks and his
identification to cash them. It’s really quite simple to assume a new identity.”

Giselle stared and said nothing.

“The care and feeding of love and beauty should be a primary concern of the human race, but if I can’t afford it at any given moment, it doesn’t follow I should abandon my
concern. Making love to you this afternoon, I argued with myself about confessing the deed, but confession would have destroyed the aura of love that we’d created. I also tried to understand
whether my fraudulence was enhancing or diminishing my excitement, and decided it wasn’t a factor, that I existed for you apart from my fraudulence. But I knew the confession would change
your
view of what was happening, and I didn’t want that. I wanted you to see what lies in store for you in America, the future of your ambition, which we both know is formidable. You
will have a successful career, I’m certain of that. Given our marriage and our love, I suspect you’d be inclined to tuck me in your pocket and carry me along with you, or park me in an
apartment on the Upper East Side while you circle the globe with your camera. But I would rather have no Giselle than half of Giselle. I could never survive the madness that would follow such a
raveled connection.”

I knew that as I talked Giselle’s vision was framed by the real and the filmic visions of Brenda’s performance, naked on screen, all but naked on stage. I turned to see Brenda remove
her G-string and, unlike Consuela, stand before the club crowd without a garment, letting all eyes find what they sought while she danced another sixteen bars, and then, lights out, she was
gone.