Indecision (22 page)

“Yeah,” I volunteered. And I
was
feeling some sweatiness of the palms and queasiness of the stomach, as well as a certain sizzling fizz of expiring context at the rear of my brain.

“You’re feeling the yeah?” Ford said.

By now the unanimous collective feeling seemed to be that we were all rolling pretty hard by now. Kat stood up and spread her arms. “I
need
to do some yoga. Everyone let’s follow me in some sun salutations.” I stood up along with the others on the squishy rolling cushions of the couches as Kat hopped onto the floor and we formed a forward-facing row of five with our hands dangling to our sides.

“Funny about America,” Vaneetha said. “In India it’s more often the men . . .”

“That makes sense.” I didn’t know what she was talking about—but it did seem like men sometimes did do some things more frequently than non-men.

I spread my palms outward, and in imitation of everyone else raised up my arms into a neat spiritual point above my head. Then we all pressed our palms outward and brought our arms down trailing glowing combs of light. This was repeated several times.

“That’s the only segment we have room for,” Kat said. “But doesn’t everyone’s chest feel so, so much bigger now? Isn’t that so great?” Everyone kind of heartily said yeah and we all sat back down again.

“Kat’s a hippy,” Sanch announced.

Ford: “Hippies were good. Except how they dress.”

“And
think,
” Dan added.

Kat: “We’re all so smart here. Think of it—millions of years of evolution have evolved us to exactly where we are now.”

“One step forward, two steps back,” Dan said.

“So good
you’re
here,” Kat said to Vaneetha.

Vaneetha smiled a smile on which some dentist somewhere must have made some serious money.

Kat: “It’s not nice always being the only girl around. Can we all just look at our new friend Vaneetha and think how lovely she is?” There were some more very earnest yeahs, and then in an action that may or may not have been connected to any of the foregoing Sanch started unbuttoning his shirt. “Show us your tits!” Ford shouted.

“Not mine!” Vaneetha sounded alarmed.

Ford: “Sanch’s is the tits I was talking about.”

Sanch tossed his head back, threw open his shirt, cupped his beanbag-shaped male breasts and jiggled them at us. Ford and I were laughing but Kat said, “I think they’re the most
beautiful
tits.”

“Thank you,” Sanch said. “I’ve been waiting for that remark since I became obese.”

Ford: “Yeah man, every spring break, Sanch just walks around San Padre Island hoping somebody’ll compliment his tits.” Sanch had never been anywhere at all on the spring-break exhibitionism circuit. Still he was saying, “Mine is the tragedy of the frat boy. We frat boys go around demanding that women show us
their
breasts but it’s our breasts that we want the world—to want to see. This is why so many of us get sex-reassignment surgeries.”

Kat: “Come on, we’re rolling. Let’s all be honest with each other. You Chambers St. fuckers
never
mean what you say.”

Ford: “What about Dwight?”

“Good
question,
” Kat said.

“Show us
your
tits, Dwight!” Sanch said.

Ford: “Vaneetha, have you seen Dwight’s hairy blond chest? He’s like a European ape. He’s a total freak of nature.”

“Dwight looks frightened,” Kat said—and this did make me feel alarmed. “Hey everybody,” she said. “Let’s just talk about how great Dwight is.” Everyone agreed how I was really great—except Vaneetha, which was all right since she was the one who looked the most sincere about it anyway. Nevertheless Kat went on: “What are your deep-seated worries? You can tell us, Dwight.”

“No, I’m feeling good. And I feel especially good because I just started seeing a psychoanalyst today. So as for worries . . .”

Dan: “You can afford that?”

“My sister’s helping out.” It seemed to violate the whole sharing spirit of the room to be misleading everyone, and I felt bad toward Kat. Yet chemically I was feeling very, very good. Moreover, one of my feet was touching Vaneetha’s thigh through her mauve-colored, possibly rayon, yet somehow crepelike skirt.

“But Dwight tell us what terrifies you,” Kat was saying while she on one side of me and Dan on the other had started unbuttoning my blue Brooks Brothers shirt.

Sanch: “Probably his worst fear is that a bunch of people will take off all his clothes and sit around asking him questions.” And it was true, I was afraid that the friendly inquisition would continue—and equally afraid it would not.

Then Kat evidently forgot about inquiring into my fears; I watched as the topic vanished from her mind. She said, “I
need
someone to lick my eyeball. Have you ever licked an eyeball, Sanch?” She’d pulled her eyelids wide with her fingers. “Wanna?”

“Not my first choice, but all right.” Sanch clambered over us with his shaking belly and leaned above Kat to lick her cornea. Next thing you knew an eyeball-licking craze had swept the crowd and more clothes were being shed and Vaneetha was saying, “I
love
New York City. It always surprises me!” At least two voices called out, “We love Vaneetha!” and Ford said, “Dwight got lucky.” And I did feel pretty lucky, since Vaneetha seemed so brave, to have thrown herself into all this, and now to be going so far as to unbutton her own shirt as Kat and Dan attempted to pull off mine.

Kat, laughing: “Look at Dwight’s eyes! Everybody look at Dwight go bug-eyed while he waits for Vaneetha’s . . .” She was wearing nothing on top now but a black lace bra, and as she reached around to unclasp the back she paused and looked into my eyes.

“Dwight,” Ford said, “what do you think you’re going to see?”

Dan: “Hold on, Vaneetha, hold on. I want Dwight to do something. Dwight, are you willing to be a prophet?”

I would have looked at him in confusion if I’d been able to tear my eyes away from Vaneetha’s imminent chest. I felt so stupidly happy I could hardly believe either the stupidity or the happiness.

“I want you to gaze into Vaneetha’s breasts and—”

Kat: “Yeah, Dwight, tell us what you see—”

Dan: “Dwight, you are about to have before you two crystal balls. We want you to tell us what you see in them.”

“It’s all right, we’re all mammals here,” Vaneetha reassured me as I watched her left breast emerge from one cup of the bra. “Please tell me I won’t remember this!” she said.

Ford: “This is your job, Dwight. You’ve got to look into the future that no one will remember. You’re our prophet.”

“I see happiness.” Everyone laughed. “But I don’t see my place of work—I can’t see Pfizer at the same time as I see this—this—”

“He’s going to quit his job,” Kat said.

“Right,” I said. “There’s one prophecy. We’re all going to quit our jobs.”

Dan: “And become soft-core pornographers?”

I did feel that women’s breasts were objects of an undepletable fascination. But even in the fugue of Ecstasy it was also clear that I wasn’t the first to notice this, and my discovery wouldn’t be parlayable into any particular career. “Hmn . . . what
do
I see? I see like a radio-tower beacon, a radio-tower beacon and it’s flashing a secret message.”

Vaneetha: “It’s called a nipple.”

“It’s sending out waves of very happy information, very good news.”

Sanch: “What news?”

“It’s some tender news. More good, less bad—that’s what I’m prophesying for the foreseeable future.”

The other breast popped out.

“Double tenderness for all the world! Mutual constant consoling tenderness and satisfying unemployment for everyone!”

Dan: “Dwight is a prophet of tenderness!”

“Families taking Ecstasy together!” I said. “Everyone sort of being gay! Or lesbian! Free public psychoanalysis for everyone! Lavish state-funded group therapy in the nude! Very colorful umbrellas and no more rain!”

Everyone was laughing—although Dan was laughing his evil laugh. Still I couldn’t stop myself: “An end to the Cold War! Or that’s already happened. But I mean a permanent future that we can rely on! Warm milk and guaranteed tender safety for all honest mammals willing to work a twenty-hour week!”

So then we all sat around holding hands with boys kissing girls, and girls kissing girls, and boys occasionally kissing boys, and everyone saying there was going to be more tenderness in the world starting right now and spreading out from this room. Especially if we installed a webcam. Global tenderness would radiate from us in waves, and no one (except maybe Dan, who was reticent on this question) could understand why we couldn’t kiss just as promiscuously every day, and as sincerely hold hands.

“More good, less bad!” reiterated Sanch, who was completely naked now and had started distributing hard candy suckers for us all to suck on.

“Waves of crashing tenderness,” Ford announced, standing up to strip off his boxers and then displaying himself slowly in rotation like a verticalized lamb shank in some falafel joint.

Kat: “Tenderness in the world! Especially the Middle East!”

“Yeah,” Sanch said. Then a silence of bliss-scoured consciousness sort of fell across the group even as tiny grains of reality seemed to start gathering in the corners of the room. An hour might have passed as we listened to the ambisexual Scandinavian voice from the stereo singing in a made-up plaintive language over scattered break beats, computerized indigestion, and swelling synthesized strings. The end of the album seemed to prompt or else just acknowledge the whole group’s coming-down dissolution, and with morning leaking into the room the others began slinking off to their cubicles. I stood up and led Vaneetha out onto the fire escape.

In the grit-speckled lavender-ish dawn we sat on the cold painted iron and shared one of Dan’s last cigarettes. (He was quitting one more time.)

“You smoke?” Vaneetha said.

I shook my head. “Never.”

“I don’t either. Nasty habit.” She laughed and shivered and took another drag.

“You must be cold.”

“Not until I admit I am. I’m so pleased with this evening, Dwight. You and your friends are precisely the reason my parents didn’t want me to come to New York. New York . . .” she said, and there standing guard above us were the twin Zen sentries of the WTC. Down below a couple of cabs patrolled for fares, and across the street some cast-iron classical pilasters dropped beneath the snoozing Z’s of the fire escapes. Generally the whole mongrel romance of the city was in place. I was like, “So about the
Bhagavad Gita.
”

The nice eyebrows went straight up.

“I’m interested in this nonattachment-to-the-fruits-of-one’s-actions idea. Wouldn’t it be true that if you didn’t worry about the fruits . . .”

“Yes?”

“Then the actions would be easier to carry out?”

A smile seemed to her to be answer enough; and then we repaired to my bedroom, where like the uninhibited prepubescents of some future race of more enlightened beings, we lay around petting one another without climax until finally it was time for Vaneetha to go to work.

“What? No sick day?”

“I really should. I’ll see you soon?” she asked.

“Get up.” This was Dan, standing above me, rocking my shoulder.

“Don’t wake me up!” I said. “Aren’t none of us going to work again?”

“I’m not saying work. I’m saying get up.”

He pulled the comforter off the bed and told me to follow him. The lava lamp sent up another psychedelic burp as we walked across the filthy wooden floor that was strewn with bright sucker wrappers like flowers torn from some cellophane trees.

I ducked out the window and followed Dan up the fire escape. The morning air felt residually sensual as it mingled around my hairy legs, and also I liked the snug half-prehensile feel of climbing barefoot up the painted rungs. Yet I had a developing feeling that something bad must be going on. For instance it seemed like there might be an unusually high number of sirens going by.

“Come on,” Dan said.

“Is this going to be a bad thing?” So why hurry then? Why not loiter a little? Still I reached the roof—Sanch and Ford and Kat were already there in various states of fascination and undress—and turned around. A huge gout of smoke was pouring from a lateral tear in one of the towers, six blocks away; and suddenly, beneath the massive buildings, under the tall sheer sky, I felt obscene and small, like a fly batting at the bottom of a TV screen.

“What happened? Bomb?”

“Supposedly a
plane,
” Sanch said.

Ford: “I mean, go back to flight school, dude.”

“At least there’s two of them,” I said. In a leftover effort at optimism I was trying to look on the bright side. “With any other big building, there’s usually only one, so—” Then I saw some white projectile streaking in from the southwest. “Hey! Another plane!” I was delighted. “They’ve sent it to rescue the other—or it must be coming to help all the . . .”

NINETEEN

I woke up and learned to my dismay that I was still in the Oriente. Dully I pulled on yesterday’s ripe-smelling tee shirt, pushed the mosquito netting aside, looked around for spiders, and emerged, feeling a certain dazzled, shaky day after–type sadness, from the hut. I offered Edwin and Brigid the apologetic smile of the disgraced bobohuariza magnate, adding, for Brigid’s more particular benefit, the sheepish shrug of the convicted sex offender.

I spent the morning trekking behind them through the silvery syrup of the jungle light, underneath the huge straight trees dripping with last night’s rain.

I felt shamed into modesty by the ignorant enthusiasms of the day before, also somehow by the unhurt quality of my minor life. The merely personal content of this life, happening to be its only content, had somehow seemed to thin out like something spilled on the floor, and all I wanted was to get out of the disoriente, go back home, and slide on with my own little version of the nonreprehensible American way of life, and not make other claims. Or I don’t know what I wanted. But I figured as soon as we got out of the jungle I would ditch Brigid, take a bus back to Quito, maybe bring along some bobohuariza, just leave Ecuador ASAP. The Abulinixes might or might not be duds, but in any case I had arrived at a major life decision, which was that I really didn’t give any particular fuck what happened to me once I got back to America, as long as I
did
make it back and got some new job there as unsatisfying as the last one. (Weird how quickly sadness had turned to anger. . . .) As long as I could sit in a comfortable chair, in a private home fumigated against spiders, watching some quality programming on TV, as long as I had some non-Ecuadorian food and upholstered furniture, fresh laundry and regular access to a hot shower, if I had shaving cream and razors, and shampoo and conditioner in a jungle-free environment—that was going to be fine with me. And since it wouldn’t be fine with my kids, who would feel ashamed of dad’s lifestyle, I wouldn’t have them. Little fuckers.