The Female of the Species (38 page)

“I’ll take him down to his cage.” Errol grabbed the ferret quickly by the back of the neck. It pawed at the air, wriggling and gurgling, but Errol held fast. “There’s one thing that occurs to me, Gray,” said Errol before he left, dangling the struggling ferret out in front of him. “All this ‘regular life’ business. I mean, it’s fine if you want to live on a beach or if I want to take up interior carpentry. We can both do that. But this is regular life, isn’t it? Already? We eat; we drink; we talk. We buy things—we’ve probably already discussed the price of papayas, even if sometimes they were imported. I know how you’re thinking. I’ve thought that way, too. Live like the People. Don’t agonize, don’t analyze, don’t be tense. But these are our lives, Gray. Maybe even in regular life there’s agony and analysis and tension. It seems to me that to pretend to have lived outside of all this is a conceit, maybe even a pretension. We’re in it as much as the next guy, whether we read journals or science fiction, whether we use long words or short ones. Sure, Gray, go to the beach. But there you’ll be, on the beach. There’s no getting away. That whole fantasy about being a normal person seems like running away, doesn’t it? It’s as if to say there’s an island somewhere where there aren’t any real problems—”

“Where everything works out,” said Gray softly.

“Exactly. You don’t need fairy tales; you just came up with a great one. Here we are. In our lives. Certain things happen, just the way they do to everyone else. Your ferret is acting weird. You have to decide to whom to award these fellowships. Ralph has taken up smoking. There you have it. You’re stuck with it, Gray, and I can’t blame you for wishing you could get out from under. You can’t. Welcome to your life. You’ve already lived fifty-nine years of it. Fifty-nine regular years.”

“I just want to be with him, that’s all,” said Gray, looking at the floor.

“I know,” said Errol. “It’s actually pretty simple, isn’t it.” Errol walked downstairs holding the ferret before him and watching the saliva burble between its teeth.

Errol returned to her office an hour later to announce that there was a bat in the kitchen.

“Is that what Arabella is screeching about?”

“Of course.”

“You know that girls are taught to squeal like that. It isn’t an inherent sexual trait that the female of the species gets up on chairs and makes piercing sounds in the presence of small animals.”

“Anyway, the Big Brave Men will take care of it. Thought you’d want to know what was going on.”

Errol returned to the kitchen to find Arabella crouching behind Raphael, her sharp, polished nails clutching his shirt. “Is it flying again?” she squeaked.

“You have eyes, don’t you?” asked Raphael, sounding tired. “I saved him for you, McEchern. I figured you could use some practice smashing something. Today we start your not-so-nice-a-guy lessons.”

Errol picked up a broom. Raphael shook his head. “No style. Do you have that blade on you?”

“No, but—”

“I told you to carry it.”

“Sorry.
Ralph II
isn’t ready for release yet.”

“Get it.”

“What am I—”

“Get it.”

Out of curiosity, Errol did as he was told. Raphael took the knife, held it by the blade, and pointed at a knothole in the paneling of the breakfast room; when released, the knife turned through the air to land squarely in the center of the knot.

“That’s wonderful!” Arabella cooed.

Raphael turned to Arabella and looked into her eyes with the torches turned up full. “You think so?”

Arabella took an involuntary step back. Her face turned red. “Y-yes,” she stuttered. “Where did you learn that?”

Raphael wouldn’t stop looking at her; his eyes had her pinned against the wall as surely as any switchblade. “As a kid I used to lie in bed picking off rats before I went to sleep. Better than counting sheep.” At last he eased his eyes off Arabella kindly, as if she were an animal he’d caught by the tail and decided to let go. This time.

“McEchern. Try it.”

Errol pulled the knife out of the wood and held it by the blade. It was a fine knife, well weighted. He tested it in his hand, then aimed for the same knot. He missed, by a few inches, but the motion felt good, and the knife stuck well into the paneling.

“A natural,” said Raphael, and gave Errol some pointers. With a few more tries, Errol was getting closer to the knothole.

The bat flashed by and landed in the upper corner of the room.

“Now,” Raphael whispered.

Errol pitched the switchblade; the knife sunk into the wall with a small brown animal between the handle and the paneling.

Raphael smiled, and stopped Errol from retrieving the knife. “Leave it there,” he said. “Let her see it. Tell her you did that. She’ll be pleased.”

“Since when do you look out for what Gray Kaiser thinks of me?” asked Errol suspiciously.

“She’s an appreciative woman,” Raphael explained. “It would be good for her if she still thought well of someone.”

“She still thinks well of you…” said Errol warily.

“For now.”

Errol looked at Raphael and felt the house’s heaviness again; he remembered Gray upstairs dreaming of beaches and chest hair. “Oh,
Raphael
,” said Errol, perhaps for the first time in six months using the man’s real name, as a plea, a concession, a final resort.

“Watch it,” said Raphael coldly. “You forget who I am. What do you expect from me, McEchern? Really?”

There was a look on Raphael’s face. He was right. Errol had forgotten it briefly, but Errol had seen it often enough: when he turned on Pamela Rose and called her unattractive; when he bore down all the more on the accelerator, with Errol imploring him for a little consideration from the back seat; when at the concert he kissed Gray without mercy, with Errol in the next chair; when he drew a knife on his own father; when he found two fragile, sentimental objects that had survived winters and troublemaking adolescents for seven years, only to throw them onto cement, and again when he was willing to pitch them once more, even though Gray had spent days trying to replace them. How could Errol have forgotten? More important, how could Gray? Because she had forgotten. She was upstairs with her papayas and cockleshells and basket weaving and a $45,000 fellowship about which Errol suddenly did have an opinion, a strong one.

Errol turned on his heel and headed upstairs, leaving a speared bat on the wall behind him, not to impress Gray, but rather to leave behind a scene in which slaughter “with style” was a route to impressing anyone.

Errol walked in without knocking. “Gray, before you give him that money, you should know he has absolutely no intention of your going with him.”

She stood up. “What has he told you?”

“I’m not his emissary. But I’ve watched enough. If he walks out of here with $45,000, his back and little wads of green in his fists may be the last you ever see of him.”

Gray grabbed Errol’s arm. “
What
has he told you?”

“You’re an anthropologist,” said Errol, pulling away from her hand coldly. “Remember
human beings
, Gray? Remember what they’re like?”

Gray pushed past him and toward the stairs. Errol followed behind her. Just before the landing her arm shot out to stop him.

Raphael was on the second stair. Arabella faced him. Her belt and heels were red patent leather and glistened like newly wet lips. Her hair rippled. Freckles spattered across her breasts.
The torches were blazing, but this time she didn’t step back.

Raphael reached for Arabella’s soft white neck and kissed her. She buried her long fingernails in his hair.

Gray waited respectfully until they were finished. Their lips parted; she took two more steps to the landing, where she could be clearly seen.

“Vandal,” said Gray softly. That was all.

Raphael did not start but looked smoothly up at his lover:
I am like this
. Shards of pink glass shattered all over the foyer floor.

Gray turned and went back upstairs. It seemed she no longer had any questions to ask Raphael about his project, after all. She seemed to understand his project only too well.

Errol remained a moment longer to overhear Arabella tell Raphael quietly, “We can talk later.”

Raphael looked back at her as if she were a used paper towel. “Whatever for?” he asked, and passed Errol casually on his way upstairs.

It was not necessary to spy on the ensuing conversation, for Raphael spoke clearly enough for the whole household to hear, as if his statements were a matter of public record. Gray was furious, and couldn’t have been inaudible if she’d tried.

“Don’t apologize,” said Gray through her teeth.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Raphael. “You should know better.”

“Why don’t
you
?”

“You’re not going to give me that fellowship now, are you?”

“
What else can I do to you?
” Gray screamed.

“Well,” said Raphael calmly, “I suppose that means I’ve wasted several months of time and effort.”

“You mean to tell me—”

“Now, Gray K.,” he said fondly, “why else would I seduce a woman more than twice my age?”

“Get out!”

“I was concerned at first that you were canny. But you’re like the rest of them. A pity, really.”

“I told you to get out of this house.”

“Why certainly,” said Raphael genteelly. “I was just leaving.”

Holding himself erect, his face relaxed and imperturbable as ever, Raphael walked casually downstairs and picked up his coat. Without a glance at Errol or Arabella, he swung it over his shoulder and left the house.

Errol went into Gray’s office and sat. Gray sat. They said nothing. It was like a wake, though no one cried. Gray stared at the wall, at a space where nothing hung. Errol didn’t feel anything. Gray, too, looked turned off. She didn’t move but sat in her chair with her hands curled before her the way he’d seen old women sit for hours in nursing-home wheelchairs. The silence in the room was wide. Errol wondered, Is this blankness? Hey, Ralph, is this what it’s like?

Time passed; Errol had no idea how much, until Arabella slipped in the door. “I’m sorry, Dr. Kaiser, I—”

“Leave me alone.”

“I’m in love with him,” said Arabella staunchly.

“Don’t make me laugh.”

“It’s just, if I didn’t feel so strongly—”

“What did I tell you?”

“To go—but I feel we really have to discuss this, because if I start seeing him, this could get really awkward if we don’t have an understanding—”

“Good, let’s arrive at a understanding. Did you hear what he said to me?”

“Some of it.”

“I’m like the rest of them, you heard that?”

“Yes…”

“So what makes you so special?”

“Dr. Kaiser, I think you should know that there have been some strong feelings between Raphael and me for a while now, but we haven’t acted on them for your sake, all right? It’s just after a certain point, when you’re young, and human, it’s impossible to resist any longer—”

“You’re trying to tell me that he’s been passionately in love
with you for months, but that he hasn’t done anything about it for my sake?”

“That’s right.”

“Now, that is truly incredible.”

“Dr. Kaiser, give me a break. You’re fifty-nine and I—”

“Arabella,” said Errol. “Later.”

Arabella sighed and left the room.

“You, too, Errol,” said Gray wearily. “I have work to do.”

“It’s three in the morning.”

“I have to get these recommendations in. Leave me alone now.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“And—thanks for sitting with me.”

“Sure.”

Errol was not about to sleep; he had a sense that Gray bore watching, though he wasn’t sure for what. He roamed the house. He threw out the bat, and contemplated chucking the switchblade, too. Symbolism seemed beside the point now, though, and it was a nice knife; he slipped it in his pocket. As he walked into the den Solo raked his claws against the bars, raving back and forth in the small space, hissing and burbling as if the house were on fire and he’d been left shut up in his cage to fry cruelly by himself.

“If you behaved better,” Errol advised the ferret, “we’d let you out. But if you’re going to be nasty, there you are. All by your little lonesome. Suit yourself.”

Errol found Raphael had left his sunglasses. Just to see what it looked like, Errol turned out the light and stared out the window with them on. Raphael was right. Even with sunglasses he wasn’t looking into complete darkness, not quite. Errol looked beside him to find Raphael had left one cigarette in the pack; he lit it. The smoke burned his throat and made him cough once or twice, but he could see the appeal of the things, the relaxation. The nicotine made him lightheaded. Late as it was, Errol thought about calling Gabriel Menaker. It would be nice to get stoned.

Errol was trying to decide how he felt. He was trying to
decide if he was pleased, if he was gloating. Yet he felt more disconcerted. Standing there in Raphael’s dark glasses, breathing the same smoke, Errol heard bits of the evening’s earlier conversation at this window come back to him. Funny, that already seemed such a long time ago.

Errol snuffed out the cigarette and walked up to the exact spot where Gray had stopped him before the landing. Then he walked down to the second stair and looked up. Yes. Certainly it was possible. Especially in the corner of his eye.

“A vandal,” Errol could hear softly in his ear, “is someone who destroys things of value on purpose.”

“And for what, Ralph?” asked Errol.

“Nothing.”

“I don’t understand you.” Errol listened for more, but the foyer only echoed with that even, EKG hum of someone finally at peace. “There’s plenty of time for that,” said Errol, just as Ida had warned Sasha about oldness. “There’s plenty of time for that later.”

Errol’s voice shuddered in the foyer and died on the stairs.

All night the light burned in the crack under Gray’s office door. Though Errol urged Arabella to go home, she insisted that she’d promised to type up a finished copy of Gray’s fellowship recommendations; she finally fell into a fitful sleep on the couch. Errol knew better than to sleep himself. Not that he couldn’t have. Rather, this was one of those evenings that had become so particular that to sleep through them would be to waste a certain richness his life afforded him only once in a while. There was a feeling in this house he wanted to experience—something outside the realm of ordinary time, as if the manse had spun high into the air in the middle of a tornado and would soon land in Oz.