Memoirs Of An Invisible Man (59 page)

“Oh, no, no, no,” I hastened to reassure her. “Certainly not… or, actually, I have no idea — I’m not very well informed theologically… But only in the normal way — if at all.”

A nervous smile flickered over her face. “Then you’re not… I know it sounds silly, but the whole thing is so… I mean, you’re not the devil, or anything like that?”

“Good heavens, no.” It flitted across my mind that by my honesty I was giving up a valuable advantage: for those who believe in these things, the devil, despite his faults, has some real stature in the world — and a certain romantic appeal, furthermore. “Not at all. I’m just like everybody else.”

This concession evidently struck her as preposterous, because she laughed, and although the laugh had an edge of hysteria, it also seemed to contain a measure of relief. “Are you? Just like everybody else?” Her laughter began again, and she seemed to be having difficulty checking it. Tears began to form in the corners of her eyes.

“Well, of course there are differences…”

“Are there really? You know I
thought
I noticed something…” Still laughing, she sat down on the edge of the bed and put her hand on my knee.

“You know, I don’t think you should be taking this so lightly,” I said. “For all you know, I still might inflict some terrible curse or suck out all your blood.”

“Or turn back into a frog,” she suggested. She pulled the sheet up to my shoulders and smoothed it over my body so that my trunk took form. Her expression grew suddenly serious again. “Who
are
you? …
What
are you? If you don’t mind my putting it like that.”

The question, although perfectly obvious and inevitable, somehow caught me unprepared, and my mind raced in complete confusion. What should I tell her? Nothing. I didn’t dare tell her anything. The first rule of survival for me was never to tell anyone anything.

“There’s really nothing interesting to say about that. I
am
actually just like anyone else…” What sort of answer would satisfy her? “That is to say, I exist in a different material modality…”

“I see,” said Alice — which startled me, since I didn’t.

“You mean you were here before? I mean inhabiting a material human body, or however it works?”

“Yes. That’s exactly right. I used to have the same sort of body as everyone else.”

“And you’ve come back.”

“It’s more that I’m still here.” By the skin of my teeth.

I reached out and ran my hand along her leg. She got to her feet again but remained standing next to the bed.

“Is there something you have to do here? I mean, before you can be released from the world?”

“Not that I know of. Just the ordinary things, I suppose… like everyone else.” This discussion made me uncomfortable. “If I’m careful and don’t make any very serious mistakes, I may manage, with luck, to grow old and die.”

I sat up and put my hands around her right leg, just above the knee, sliding them up over the thigh and pushing up the hem of her dress. She shuddered but remained standing there.

“Actually, there
are
things I am compelled to do,” I said.

I pulled her over onto me, and I heard one of her shoes clatter to the floor.

“I can’t. I have to go to work.”

But she made no effort to move. The full length of her body lay pressing on mine, and I could feel her heart pounding. I ran my hands up the backs of her thighs and over her buttocks. I kissed her and heard the other shoe tumble onto the floor. With a shudder, she kissed me. Her hands began exploring my body, and we made love.

Afterwards, she sighed, and then laughed.

“No one will ever believe this.”

I was suddenly filled with dread. This had all been a mistake.

“Alice.”

“Yes?”

What should I say to her? A threat would be best. I was still in a position to inspire some terror. I should tell her that if she ever said a word about me to anyone, she would be struck dead. The earth would open up and swallow her.

“You must absolutely never speak of me to anyone. No one can know about my coming here.”

“Why not?”

“I… It’s not something I can talk about.” Somehow, despite my good intentions, this was not taking form as much of a threat. “I’m asking you not to say anything at all about me to anyone. It’s very important.”

“If you don’t want me to say anything, of course I won’t. But can’t you give me some idea what it’s all about? Why are you here at all?”

There was a long silence, during which I again tried desperately to think what I could tell her. I suddenly realized that I wanted to tell her everything. Odd the way physical intimacy engenders these confessional urges. Well, what difference would it make if I did tell her? I would never see her again. I certainly could not risk ever coming back here. This had all been an utterly extraordinary incident, a freakish, improbable turn of events that should never have occurred and would certainly never occur again. There would surely, the way my life had to be lived, never be anyone else to whom I would want to tell anything. Still, you have to be rational. What could I safely say to her? Nothing.

She climbed out of the bed and then turned back and looked down where I lay, her eyebrows raised skeptically.

“Do you mind if I ask you something?”

“Of course not,” I said — uncomfortably, since that is a question to which the true answer is probably always yes.

“Will I see you again? … I don’t mean see you. I mean, will I hear from you, or do you just fade into the sunset — or wherever it is you fade to?”

I was floundering in panic.

“I don’t know… It’s not entirely within my control…” The one thing I knew was that I could not possibly come back here. “Of course I hope so. I’ll have to see.” It was the sort of risk I must absolutely not take. I had to keep moving.

She laughed, and her laughter seemed to contain a note of mockery. “You know, you’re right. You
are
like everybody else.”

“You don’t understand,” I objected. “It’s not at all that—”

“You needn’t worry. You’re not the sort of person a girl is going to pin all her hopes on — not based on the first impression, anyway. There’s a kind of elusive quality to you, if you want to know. I was just curious. And anyhow, the question is built into the female soul:
Will he call?
It’s an involuntary mental reflex. It doesn’t mean a thing.”

She had disappeared into her closet, and now she reemerged in a fresh dress. “In fact, usually you’re better off if he doesn’t call,” she added.

She stood before a mirror, drawing a brush through her hair with long, fierce strokes. She looked neither at her own reflection nor toward me but gazed instead out the window, so that I had a view of her profile, which, although for the moment expressionless, seemed altogether perfect to me. During the — for me, at least — uncomfortable silence, I tried to contrive a reply.

“I can’t imagine that anyone could ever have failed to call you.”

She glanced skeptically in my direction, but I thought she might be blushing.

“Maybe you’re some kind of alien. You probably ought to go out and get to know some of the other folks in the brave new world.”

“I find that lately I’m having a lot of trouble getting to know people.”

“You seemed to be managing last night.”

The corners of her mouth turned up to form the beginnings of an ironic smile. She was still not altogether comfortable addressing these looks to someone she could not see, and I watched as her eyes searched for some sign of me. She put the brush down and smoothed her dress over her body. The thing was — if only I could think clearly about it — that no matter what calculations I made of the risk and no matter what decisions I took, I was, beyond any question, going to come back here.

“It’s difficult for me to call, actually, but I thought that I might come back here this evening if you’re free.” Having said that, I found that I felt suddenly quite elated.

“I’ll be home a little after six.”

She had turned her full dazzling smile on me. She walked over and, after inadvertently flattening my nose in the search for my face, kissed me once on the lips. Then, as she drew back and turned to leave, she reached out and touched my chest with her fingertips.

“Amazing,” she said with a little laugh.

As she went out the door, I called after her, “Remember not to say anything about me.”

I waited several minutes to be sure that she was gone before going into the kitchen. I could not risk letting her see my digestive tract in operation. I had not eaten anything in thirty-six hours, and I greedily devoured several slices of bread. I knew that I was taking an unconscionable risk remaining here at all, much less making myself visible, but I was finding it difficult in my present mood to worry about anything.

I went through the apartment, taking an almost physical pleasure in touching Alice’s possessions. An open closet full of dresses, blouses, skirts, underwear. Skis. Tennis racket. The walls of the bedroom were covered with unframed sketches and paintings, many of them signed with the initials A.B. I was startled by the almost photographic quality of the draftsmanship. I had somehow thought that people no longer learned to draw that way. There were a few landscapes and some full human figures, but most of the sketches were studies of isolated objects or anatomical fragments.

At the end of the living room, by the door to the balcony, I found a drafting table. To it was pinned a pencil drawing which appeared to be an absolutely precise re-creation of the view out the adjacent window. And yet the effect was altogether different — more benign somehow, almost humorous. Perhaps it was some trick of perspective that I did not understand. Perhaps it was only my mood.

One wall of the room was covered from floor to ceiling by shelves filled with enormous art books. The books without pictures took up less than a single shelf, and looking through the titles you could see every course Alice had ever taken in college outside the art history department. Chase and Phillips, Liddell & Scott. Cambridge Shakespeare.
Ulysses. The Collected Poems of
W. B.
Yeats.
I pulled out a book. The name Alice Barlow was written along the top edge of the flyleaf in italic script.
Stately, plump.
Notes neatly lettered into the margins everywhere with a drafting pen.
I am the boy who can enjoy invisibility… Yes.

Once my stomach was clear again, I went out and walked to midtown in such an exultant mood that I wanted to stop the other people in the street and speak to them, tell them what a pleasure it was to be among them on that beautiful autumn day. I spent several hours in the offices of a law firm, learning about the proposed acquisition of an insurance company in Kansas, but finally I decided that I could not stand there any longer in silence, and I went outside and walked back uptown. Mainly just to talk to someone, I called up Willy and discussed my portfolio. Even he could not undermine my mood. On the contrary, he only reminded me that as Jonathan Crosby I was growing more substantial by the day, with a net worth now over $80,000. I was barely able to restrain myself from making some trades. Never buy anything when you are in a good mood.

I was outside the door to Alice’s apartment before six, expecting to wait for her there in the corridor, but I could hear her already inside unpacking groceries in the kitchen. When I knocked, she came and looked through the peephole. Seeing no one there, she opened the door and kissed me.

“You don’t walk through walls?” Her voice echoed through the hall. I put a finger on her mouth.

“You have to be more discreet,” I whispered.

“Are you married or something?” Her voice was a bit mangled because of my finger, but still loud and bright. I pushed her back into the apartment.

“You’re married to someone right on this floor?”

I got the door shut behind us.

“Alice, this is serious. No one must know anything about me.”

“I’m sorry. I forgot. I’m not a secretive person.” She ran her hands up through my hair and then down my body, as if to make sure that I was entirely there. I felt her left hand encounter the gun in my pocket. Her expression clouded momentarily, but she kissed me, and I embraced her, feeling her body pressed against mine and her breath on my neck.

“I went and bought all sorts of food for dinner, but then I realized I don’t even know if you eat.”

I hesitated. Should I let her see what happened when I ate?

“Yes, I eat. Not very much.”

“Then why don’t you open the wine while I get dinner ready.”

As she prepared the meal, she kept glancing over at the bottle tilting at impossible angles on the tabletop and at the corkscrew wrenching itself violently into the cork.

“It’s just incredible,” she said excitedly, and she came over and ran her hands all over me again. We embraced again for several minutes, and I ran my hands over her. I was so intoxicated by her physical presence that there hardly seemed any point, but I made myself let go of her and poured some wine into the glasses. Then, full of apprehension, I let her watch the first sip of white wine going down.

“Amazing!” she said. She seemed genuinely delighted by the sight. “Drink some more!”

She ran her hand down my chest in front of the esophagus.

“It’s absolutely magical.”

And when later I ate my first bite of the pasta, she was unaccountably even more entranced.

“Incredible! You can see everything! You know, you would be marvelous in an anatomy class.”

“That is unfortunately true,” I replied glumly.

“Would you mind eating a little more? God, it’s beautiful! You can see it disappearing before your eyes. What’s happening exactly? I mean is it being absorbed into some non-material dimension or something? What
is
happening?”

“Nothing… I just have an unusual metabolism. I can’t discuss it. To tell you the truth, I find it a revolting spectacle.”

But Alice did not, not at all. She watched with fascination as I absorbed one bit of the material world after another, unable to take her eyes off my digestive tract. She might have been staring at a particularly splendid tropical fish tank.