Imaginary Men (10 page)

Read Imaginary Men Online

Authors: Enid Shomer

Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Anthologies (Multiple Authors), #Literary Collections, #Literary Criticism, #test

BOOK: Imaginary Men
5.14Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
 
Page 57
tall tales to tell. She let him shine in his glory. This is what it would be like when they were olderRiva behind the scenes, modest, sure of his unswerving love. Maybe a couple of trusted servants to buffer them from the clamoring world. Deep, knowing looksa raised eyebrow, the slightest inclination of the head. They would hardly need words at all. And Riva would take pride in believing in him when no one else did, like Van Gogh's brother, Theo. They would be completely devoted to each other. Forever. It would take that long for her to finish loving him.
This blood
, Riva wrote that night.
This is the lifeblood. This blood belongs to Paul Auerbach. My wonderful, hardworking Paul who will never take me for granted
.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
''I won't be going to college after all,'' Paul said. He gripped the steering wheel with one hand, turning it rapidly from left to right.
"What?"
He repeated himself. His voice was shaking.
"But it's all worked out, you'll get a loan, you might get a scholarship."
"Forget the scholarship. I never counted on the scholarship. That's just a fairy tale you believed in."
"I thought you had a chance."
"Maybe if I do well the first year. But they'd rather give it to an out-of-state student than to me."
"And the loan by itself isn't enough?"
"It might be if it were big enough."
"Well then what's the problem?" Riva asked, her voice rising against her will.
"My savings are gone as of tonight."
"Oh my God. You gave him the money?"
"I had to." He started to cry. "I had to," he said again. "That bastard. I hate him. I wish he'd die."
"I'm so sorry."
"He doesn't care about my life. I'm his son, and he doesn't care shit for me."
"You have to go to college. You have to. Even if it's part-time at first. Even if you have to go at night."
 
Page 58
"I'm so tired of fighting for every little thing."
Riva looked around. In the distance, past the train trestle, a few houselights glowed, smears of yellow and white beyond the windshield, blurred in the thick, low-hanging mist. The trees were fringed with little flaglets of leaves that shook in the evening air. They made a rustling sound, like something breathing out there. "You can't give up," she said.
"Yes I can. I can get that job at Hahn's. There's nothing wrong with selling shoes."
She took his head in her hands and kissed his forehead. "You deserve better. You're going to be a great lawyer. I believe in you." Riva's mind was already racing: how would he raise $1,500 in five months when it had taken him three years to save it up the first time? Maybe it was cruel to keep on encouraging him. After all, she had never been poor. Her closet was jammed full of clothes. She'd never ironed a shirt in her life. She didn't even pick up her dirty underpants off the floor if she didn't feel like it. "You'll get the money somehow."
"I don't care anymore," he said dully. He looked askance and nodded to himself. "I'm going to take you home now."
"No! I don't want to go home yet."
"I'm really tired," he said.
"This could be the most important night in your life."
"Just the worst," he said.
"This is the night you have to be very strong. I love you," she told him, pulling him toward her. She was going to make him believe in himself as much as she did. Couldn't he tell how much she loved him? "It would be like a betrayal if you gave up. What about our life together?"
"You should find somebody else."
"Come here," she said. She opened the door and got out of the car. "Let's take a walk." Within a few paces, she had disappeared into the ground fog.
"Riva?"
"I'm over here. Come on. Bring the blanket."
He got out of the car and walked toward her voice.
She kissed him all over after they lay down on the blanket. She traced his face with her fingertips and wrote "I adore you" on his
 
Page 59
brow. She could make him forget how bad he felt. She had that power over him.
"God, Riva," he said. "You're driving me crazy I love you so much."
"Do you have . . . protection?" she asked.
"I won't finish inside you."
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
Paul had met lots of subtle people in San Antonio. That was his word"subtle." Cool, neat, hip. Sophisticated, though they were only kids. They came from New York City, Santa Barbara and Grosse Pointe, Lake Forest and New Canaan. They went to prep schools like Miss Porter's in Farmington and the Friends School in Shaker Heights and Groton and Andover. It wasn't just that they were rich. Money hadn't spoiled them, Paul said, it had refined them. They could afford to be nice to everybody, because jealousy was practically beyond them. They all had jolly nicknamesPuffer and Ships and Ironlegs for the boys, Beanstalk, Barnum, and Smash for the girls. Naturally, he'd also met kids from public schools; they were bright and well-off, too. The weekend had been a revelation to him. Riva tried her best to keep track of all the people in the anecdotes Paul tolda succession of minor pranks and triumphs over authority, at least half of which hadn't happened in San Antonio at all but had merely been retold there. "They made me feel like one of them," Paul kept saying. "They treated me like one of them."
"You
were
one of them, silly," Riva said. "You won the right to be there just like they did."
"I have to laugh now at the kids here at school, like Duke Weinstein acting so stuck-up because his father is the Pabst Blue Ribbon distributor. Ships Stewart's father owns a steel mill, and Donald, from Chicago, is
the
heir to the Quaker Oats fortune."
Now that Paul had had a taste of real money, his own poverty in relation to the wealth of the kids at Hoover High seemed less extreme. This despite the fact that his financial problems were never greater. He'd been accepted to GW, gotten a small loan, been turned down for the scholarship, and had no way of paying for the first semester. Somehow, though, when he talked about San Antonio, it soothed him. He had seen the effects of great wealth and they were
 
Page 60
so pleasant, so ordinary, that he was able to dismiss the present as a temporary state of affairs. He had, in short, learned that he was worthy, that poverty was indeed not a punishment but a caprice of fate. His pride softened and two weeks later, when Riva suggested that he meet Pop Goldring about borrowing the money for college, he agreed.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
"What kind of lawyer? Corporate? Tax? Malpractice?" Pop Goldring's voice was calm, like an animal grazing over a vast field. He spoke slowly, one question after another. The Spanish Inquisition, Riva thought. She had tried to prepare Paul for the interview. Now she had to sit quietly, without interfering or interrupting. She didn't want to make Paul look weak. He could answer any question himself, anyway. The worst would be about his family. His face would get red and blotchy and circles would spread under his armpits beneath his gray tweed sport coat. Inside the white collar of his shirt and the thin black suede tie she'd given him, his neck looked as delicate and vulnerable as an antelope's. The skin there was soft and smooth. His Adam's apple reminded her of his cock.
Riva studied the huge painting by her grandfather's Michelangelo. The watercolors were so soft and muted that the harlequins' bodies could have been clouds as easily as flesh. The jesters walked toward her as if borne in a wash of their own music and the sweet heavy breath of the ox.
"You plan to live at home?"
"I have to. If I could afford it, I'd join a fraternity and live at the frat house," Paul was saying.
"Your parents are a bad influence on you," Pop Goldring said. He flicked a gold Ronson lighter, and the end of his cigar glowed briefly while he sucked on it.
Paul said nothing.
"Your father drinks?"
"No, sir."
"Where does all the money go?"
"He gambles, sir."
"You're not a good risk." Pop turned away and pulled open a desk drawer.
 
Page 61
Riva stopped breathing. Paul's face flushed with rage or shame or both. He looked down at the floor.
"I couldn't give you the money directly. I'll pay the school. Like I'm going to do for Riva. For the first year. Then, we'll talk again. You'll pay me back when you're established."
"I'll put it in writing, sir." Paul's voice cracked with emotion as he stood and offered her grandfather his hand. "I don't know how to thank you enough, sir."
"I don't need it in writing. I build apartments with five hundred units on a handshake." He pumped Paul's hand, then inhaled on his cigar again. "You'll send me a letter, with the amount and the address."
"Yes, sir."
Riva kissed her grandfather and hugged him and kissed him again. As she turned to go, she eyed the harlequins, watching to see if their gaze followed her across the room. It didn't. She supposed that meant it wasn't a very good painting.
"You've saved my life!" Paul said in the elevator.
"I'm so happy for you. And proud. You made a very good impression."
"You've saved my fucking life." He slipped his hand under her yellow cashmere sweater and inside her bra in one swift move. "My life," he said again.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
In Chemistry class, Riva stared out the window at the green curtain of mulberry trees that lined the athletic field and imagined the two of them lying on a soft blanket beneath them. Paul was on top, launching himself into her. Love was a presence, as real and invisible as the elements that expanded and contracted that late spring according to the beautiful, orderly laws of gases. Exotic substances evaporated and then collected again, distilling in the beakers, dripping from the retorts. It looked like magic, and Riva could only fathom it a little at a time, like love or God. She and Paul sat miles apart in the old-fashioned classroom with the floor that sloped like a movie theater. She could see the back of his head, his shoulders attentive through an oxford-cloth shirt. She knew his body intimately nowhow the knobs of his spine disappeared between his shoulder blades like an
 
Page 62
underground spring and rose up again where the neck connected to the torso; the lobes of his ears, delicate as the rolled edges of silk scarves; the tawny odor of his sweat and semen. They owned each other now. The radio was a boxful of love songs. The days grew warmer, and Paul already looked collegiate in his chino pants, V-neck pullover, and plaid shirt. They never went anywhere on dates anymore. They lived in the car.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
On the first Saturday in June, Paul called Riva. He had just returned from the produce market, showered, and changed clothes. He sounded excited. His brother had a friend who had an apartment in downtown D.C., and Paul had arranged for them to use it that night.
"Use it?" Riva repeated.
"Yeah."
"Oh." Riva hesitated. Another technicality, wasn't it, whether they made love in the car or in some stranger's apartment? "Okay, great," she said.
"Do you want to go to the movies first?"
"Sure."
The movie flickered across the screen like the shifting patterns in a kaleidoscope. It felt like a long delay and only made Riva nervous. She remembered stories she'd heard of priests and rabbis being found in the arms of prostitutes after hotel fires. Whatever happened in the car, no one questioned their right to be in it. But an apartment was premeditated. It scared her.
"Here we are," Paul said. He turned the key in the second-story walk-up. They were somewhere on the unfashionable edge of Georgetown. The building was ugly red brick in a fake castle style with turrets and bulging bay windows. "This place gives me the creeps," Riva said.
"You'll feel better once we're inside."
"I hope so."
The furnishings were ordinary, but you could tell a single man lived there from the dark, suit colors and the piles of sports magazines. Paul turned on a table lamp and held out his arms. She went obediently to his embrace. "Come on. I'm going to make you a famous Tequila Sunrise," he said. He walked her to the kitchen where

Other books

Played (Elite PR) by Clare James
Blackout by Ragnar Jónasson
Rules of Attraction by Christina Dodd
Solaris Rising by Whates, Ian
Death's Last Run by Robin Spano
Snowjob by Ted Wood
Windfallen by Jojo Moyes
Piratas de Skaith by Leigh Brackett