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Only Pelletier and Espinoza attended the
conference, and this time they had no choice but to meet and lay their cards on
the table. At first, as was natural, they tried to avoid each other, politely
most of the time or brusquely on a few occasions, but in the end there was
nothing to do but talk. This event took place at the hotel bar, late at night,
when only one waiter was left, the youngest one, a tall, blond, sleepy boy.

Pelletier was sitting at one end of the
bar and Espinoza at the other. Then the bar began gradually to empty, and when
only the two of them were left Pelletier got up and sat down next to Espinoza.
They tried to discuss the conference, but after a few minutes it came to seem
ridiculous going on, or pretending to go on, in that vein. Once again it was
Pelletier, better versed in the art of conciliation and confidences, who took
the first step. He asked how Norton was. Espinoza confessed he didn't know.
Then he said that he called her sometimes and it was like talking to a
stranger. This last part Pelletier inferred, because Espinoza, who at times
expressed himself in unintelligible ellipses, didn't call Norton a stranger but
used the word
busy,
then the word
distracted.
For a while, the phone in
Norton's apartment floated in their conversation. A white telephone in the
grasp of a white hand, the white forearm of a stranger. But she wasn't a
stranger. Not insofar as both had slept with her. Oh white hind, little hind,
white hind, murmured Espinoza. Pelletier assumed he was quoting a classic, but
without comment asked him whether they were really going to become enemies. The
question seemed to surprise Espinoza, as if the possibility had never occurred
to him.

That's absurd, Jean-Claude," he said,
although Pelletier noticed he thought for a long time before he answered.

By the end of the night, they were drunk
and the young waiter had to help them both out of the bar. What Pelletier
remembered best was the strength of the waiter who hauled them, one on each
side, to the elevators in the lobby, as if he and Espinoza were adolescents, no
older than fifteen, two weedy adolescents clamped in the powerful arms of this
young German who had stayed until closing time, when all the veteran waiters
had already gone home, a country boy, to judge by his face and build, or a
laborer, and he also remembered something like a whisper that he later
understood was a kind of laugh, Espinoza's laugh as he was lugged by the
peasant waiter, a soft chuckle, a discreet laugh, as if the situation weren't
merely ridiculous but also an escape valve for his unspoken sorrows.

One day, when more than three months had
gone by since their visit to Norton, one of them called the other and suggested
a weekend in
London
.
It's unclear whether Pelletier or Espinoza made the call. In theory, it must
have been the one with the strongest sense of loyalty, or of friendship, which
amounts to the same thing, but in truth neither Pelletier nor Espinoza had a
strong sense of any such virtue. Both of them paid it lip service, of course.
But in practice, neither believed in friendship or loyalty. They believed in
passion, they believed in a hybrid form of social or public happiness (both voted
Socialist, albeit with the occasional abstention), they believed in the
possibility of self-realization.

The salient point is that one called and
the other said yes, and one Friday afternoon they met at the London airport and
got a cab to a hotel, then another cab, now very close to dinnertime (they had
made a reservation for three at Jane & Chloe), to Norton's apartment.

From the sidewalk, after they paid the
driver, they looked up at the lighted windows. Then, as the cab drove off, they
saw Liz's silhouette, the beloved silhouette, and then, as if a breath of foul
air had wafted into a commercial for sanitary pads, the silhouette of a man
that made them freeze, Espinoza with a bouquet of flowers in his hand,
Pelletier with a Jacob Epstein book wrapped in the finest paper. But the
pantomime above didn't end there. In one window, Norton's silhouette gestured,
as if trying to explain something that her interlocutor refused to understand.
In the other window, the man's silhouette, to the horror of its two gaping
spectators, made a kind of hula-hooping motion, or what looked to Pelletier and
Espinoza like a hula-hooping motion, first the hips, then the legs, the torso,
even the neck! a motion that contained a hint of sarcasm and mockery, unless
behind the curtains the man was undressing or melting, which seemed very
unlikely; the motion, or the series of motions, expressed not only sarcasm but
cruelty and assurance too, the assurance plain, since he was the strongest one
in the apartment, the tallest, the most muscular, the hula-hooper.

And yet there was something strange about
Liz's silhouette. To the extent that they knew her, and they thought they knew
her well, Norton wasn't the sort to stand for slights, especially in her own
apartment. So it was possible, they decided, that the man's silhouette wasn't
actually hula-hooping or insulting Liz but laughing, and laughing with her, not
at her. But Liz's silhouette didn't seem to be laughing. Then the man's
silhouette disappeared: maybe he had gone to look at books, maybe to the
bathroom or the kitchen. Maybe he had dropped onto the sofa, still laughing.
And just then Norton's silhouette drew near the window, seeming to shrink, and
then pushed back the curtains and opened the window. Norton's eyes were closed,
as if she needed to breathe the night air of
London
, and then she opened her eyes and
looked down, into the abyss, and saw them.

They called hello as if the taxi had just
left them there. Espinoza waved his bouquet of flowers in the air and Pelletier
his book, and then, without waiting to see Norton's confused face, they headed
to the door of the building and waited for Liz to buzz them in.

They were sure all was lost. As they
climbed the stairs, without talking, they heard a door being opened, and
although they didn't see her, both sensed Norton's luminous presence on the
landing. The apartment smelled of Dutch tobacco. Leaning in the doorway, Norton
looked at them as if they were two friends who had died long ago, ghosts
returning from the sea. The man waiting for them in the sitting room was
younger, probably born in the seventies, not the sixties—even the mid-seventies.
He was wearing a turtleneck sweater, although the neck seemed to sag, and faded
jeans and sneakers. He looked like a student of Norton's or a substitute
teacher.

Norton said his name was Alex Pritchard. A
friend. Pelletier and Espinoza shook his hand and smiled, knowing their smiles
would be pathetic. Pritchard didn't smile. Two minutes later they were all
sitting drinking whiskey in silence. Pritchard, who was drinking orange juice,
sat next to Norton and slung an arm over her shoulders, a gesture she didn’t
seem to mind at first (in fact, Pritchard's long arm was resting on the back of
the sofa and only his fingers, long as a spider's or a pianist's, occasionally
brushed Norton's blouse), but as the minutes went by Norton became more and
more nervous and her trips to the kitchen or bedroom became more frequent.

Pelletier attempted a few subjects of
conversation. He tried to talk about film, music, recent theater productions,
without getting any help even from Espinoza, who seemed to vie with Pritchard
in his muteness, although Pritchard's muteness was at least that of the
observer, equal parts distracted and engaged, and Espinoza's muteness was that
of the observed, sunk in misery and shame. Suddenly, without anyone being able
to say for sure who had started it, they began to talk about Archimboldian
studies. It was probably Norton, from the kitchen, who mentioned the work they
all did. Pritchard waited for her to come back and then, his arm stretched once
again along the back of the sofa and his spider fingers on Norton's shoulder,
said he thought German literature was a scam.

Norton laughed, as if someone had told a
joke. Pelletier asked him what he, Pritchard, knew about German literature.

"Not much, really," he said.

"Then you're a cretin," said
Espinoza.

"Or an ignoramus, at least,"
said Pelletier.

"In any case, a
badulaque,"
said Espinoza.

Espinoza had said
badulaque
in Spanish, and Pritchard didn't know what it meant.
Norton didn't understand it either and wanted to know what it was.

"A
badulaque,"
said Espinoza, "is someone of no consequence.
It's a word that can also be applied to fools, but there are fools of
consequence, and
badulaque
applies
only to fools of no consequence."

"Are you insulting me?"
Pritchard wanted to know.

"Do you feel insulted?" asked
Espinoza, who had begun to sweat profusely.

Pritchard took a swallow of his orange
juice and said that he did, he really did feel insulted.

"Then you have a problem, sir,"
said Espinoza.

"Typical reaction of a
badulaque,"
added Pelletier.

Pritchard got up from the sofa. Espinoza
got up from his armchair. Norton said that's enough, you're behaving like
stupid children. Pelletier started to laugh. Pritchard went over to Espinoza
and tapped him on the chest with his index finger, which was almost as long as
his middle finger. He tapped his chest, one, two, three, four times, as he
said:

"First: I don't like to be insulted.
Second: I don't like to be taken for a fool. Third: I don't like it when some
Spanish fucker takes the piss. Fourth: if you have anything else to say to me,
let's go outside."

Espinoza looked at Pelletier and asked
him, in German, of course, what he should do.

"Don't go outside," said
Pelletier.

"Alex, leave now," said Norton.

And since Pritchard didn't really intend
to hit anyone, he kissed Norton on the cheek and left without saying goodbye.

That night the three of them ate at Jane
& Chloe. At first they were a little subdued, but the dinner and wine
cheered them up and in the end they went home laughing. Still, they were
reluctant to ask Norton who Pritchard was and she didn't say anything that
might cast light on the lanky figure of that disagreeable youth. Instead,
toward the end of dinner, they talked about themselves, about how close they'd
come to destroying, possibly forever, the friendship they felt for one another.

Sex, they agreed, was too wonderful
(although almost immediately they regretted the adjective) to get in the way of
a friendship based as much on emotional as intellectual affinities. Pelletier
and Espinoza took pains, however, to make it clear there in front of each other
that the ideal thing for them, and they imagined for Norton too, was that she
ultimately and in a nontraumatic way (try to make it a soft landing, said
Pelletier) choose one of them, or neither of them, said Espinoza, either way
the decision was in her hands, Norton's hands, and it was a decision she could
make whenever she wanted, whenever was most convenient for her, or never make,
put off, defer, postpone, draw out, delay, adjourn until her deathbed, they
didn't care, because they were as in love with her now, while Liz was keeping
them in limbo, as they had been before, when they were her active lovers or
colovers, as in love with her as they would be when she chose one of them or
the other, or when she (in a possible future that was only slightly more
bitter, a future of shared bitterness, of somehow mitigated bitterness), if
such was her wish, chose neither of them. To which Norton replied with a
question, no doubt partly rhetorical, but a plausible question all the same:
what would happen if, while she took her time considering the options, one of
them, Pelletier for example, suddenly fell in love with a student who was
younger and prettier than she, and richer, too, and more charming? Should she
consider the pact broken and automatically give up on Espinoza? Or should she
take the Spaniard, since he was the only one left? To which Pelletier and
Espinoza responded that the real possibility of such a thing happening was
extremely remote, and anyway she could do as she liked, even become a nun if
she so desired.

"The only thing either of us wants is
to marry you, live with you, have children with you, grow old with you, but at
this point in our lives, what matters to us is preserving your
friendship."

After that night, the plane trips to
London
began again.
Sometimes it would be Espinoza who came to visit, other times Pelletier, and
once in a while both. When this happened they would always stay at the same
place, a small, uncomfortable hotel on

Foley Street

, near the
Middlesex
Hospital
.
When they left Norton's apartment, they would often take a walk near the hotel,
usually in silence, frustrated, somehow exhausted by the goodwill and cheer
they felt required to display during these joint visits. Many times they would
just stand there under the streetlight on the corner, watching the ambulances
going in and out. The English nurses spoke at the top of their lungs, although
from where they stood the sound of the braying voices was muted.

One night, as they were watching the
unusually quiet entrance to the hospital, they asked themselves why, when they
came to
London
together, neither of them stayed at Liz's apartment. Out of politeness,
probably, they said. But neither one of them believed in that kind of
politeness anymore. And they also asked themselves, at first hesitantly and
then vehemently, why the three of them didn't sleep together. That night a
green, sickly light seeped from under the hospital doors, a transparent green
swimming pool light, and an orderly smoked a cigarette, standing on the curb,
and among the parked cars there was one with its light on, a yellow light as in
a nest, though not just any nest but a post-nuclear nest, a nest with no room
for any certainties but cold, despair, and apathy.