The Book of Illusions (22 page)

Their second lunch at the Bluebell Inn took place on a Wednesday afternoon in late May. If Hector had been prepared for what was going to happen, he probably would have reacted differently, but after twenty-five minutes of inconsequential talk, O’Fallon’s question caught him by surprise. That evening, when Hector returned to his boardinghouse on the other side of town, he wrote in his journal that the universe had changed shape for him in a single instant.
I have missed everything. I
have misunderstood everything. The earth is the sky, the sun is
the moon, the rivers are mountains. I have been looking at the
wrong world
. Then, with the events of the afternoon still fresh in his mind, he wrote down a word-for-word account of his conversation with O’Fallon:

And so, Loesser, O’Fallon suddenly asked him, tell me what your intentions are.

I do not understand this word, Hector replied. A lovely steak sits in front of me, and I have every intention of eating it up. Is that what you are inquiring about?

You’re a sharp fellow, Chico. You know what I mean.

Begging your pardon, sir, but these intentions bewilder me. I do not grasp them.

Long-range intentions.

Oh, yes, now I see. You refer to the future, my thoughts about the future. I can safely say that my only intentions are to go on as I am now. To continue working for you. To do the best I can for the store.

And what else?

There is no else, Mr. O’Fallon. I speak from the heart. You have given me a great opportunity, and I mean to make the most of it.

And who do you think talked me into giving you that opportunity?

I cannot say. I always thought it was your decision, that you were the one who gave me my chance.

It was Nora.

Miss O’Fallon? She never told me. I had no idea that she was responsible. I owe her so much already, and now it seems I am even further in her debt. I am humbled by what you tell me.

Do you enjoy watching her suffer?

Miss Nora suffer? Why on earth should she suffer? She is a remarkable, spirited girl, and everyone admires her. I know that family sorrows weigh on her heart—as they do on yours, sir—but other than the tears she occasionally sheds for her absent sister, I have never seen her in anything but the most lively and buoyant moods.

She’s strong. She puts up a good front.

It pains me to hear this.

Albert Sweeney proposed to her last month, and she turned him down. Why do you think she did that? The boy’s father is Hiram Sweeney, the state senator, the most powerful Republican in the county. She could have lived off the fat of the land for the next fifty years, and she said no. Why do you think, Loesser?

She told me she did not love him.

That’s right. Because she loves someone else. And who do you think that person is?

It is impossible for me to answer that question. I know nothing about Miss Nora’s feelings, sir.

You’re not a pansy, are you, Herman?

Excuse me, sir?

A pansy. A homo fruit-boy.

Of course not.

Then why don’t you do something?

You talk in riddles, Mr. O’Fallon. I cannot grasp.

I’m tired, son. I have nothing to live for now except one thing, and once that thing is taken care of, all I want is to croak in peace. You help me out, and I’m willing to make a bargain with you. Just say the word, amigo, and everything is yours. The store, the business, the whole works.

Are you offering to sell me your business? I have no money. I am in no position to make such bargains.

You drift into the store last summer begging for work, and now you’re running the show. You’re good at it, Loesser. Nora was right about you, and I’m not going to stand in her way. I’m finished standing in anyone’s way. Whatever she wants, that’s what she gets.

Why do you keep referring to Miss Nora? I thought you were making a business proposition.

I am. But not unless you oblige me with this one thing. It’s not as though I’m asking you for something you don’t want yourself. I see the way you two look at each other. All you have to do is make your move.

What are you saying, Mr. O’Fallon?

Figure it out for yourself.

I cannot, sir. I truly cannot.

Nora, stupid. You’re the one she’s in love with.

But I am nothing, nothing at all. Nora could not love me.

You might think that, and I might think that, but we’re both wrong. The girl’s heart is breaking, and I’ll be damned if I sit by and watch her suffer anymore. I’ve lost two kids already, and it’s not going to happen again.

But I must not marry Nora. I am a Jew, and such things are not permitted.

What kind of a Jew?

A Jew. There is only one kind of Jew.

Do you believe in God?

What difference does that make? I am not like you. I come from another world.

Answer the question. Do you believe in God?

No, I do not. I believe that man is the measure of all things. Both good and bad.

Then we belong to the same religion. We’re the same, Loesser. The only difference is that you understand money better than I do. That means you’ll be able to take care of her. That’s all I want. Take care of Nora, and then I can die a good death.

You put me in a difficult position, sir.

You don’t know what difficult is, hombre. You propose to her by the end of the month, or else I’m going to fire you. Do you understand? I’m going to fire you, and then I’m going to kick your ass clear out of the goddamn state.

H
ector spared him the trouble. Four hours after leaving the Bluebell Inn, he closed up the store for the last time, then returned to his room and began packing his things. At some point during the evening, he borrowed his landlady’s Underwood and typed out a one-page letter to Nora, signing it at the bottom with the initials H. L. He couldn’t take the risk of leaving her with a sample of his handwriting, but neither could he walk off without an explanation, without inventing some story to account for his sudden, mysterious departure.

He told her that he was married. It was the biggest lie he could think of, but in the long run it was less cruel than an out-and-out rejection would have been. His wife had fallen ill in New York, and he had to rush back there to deal with the emergency. Nora would be stunned, of course, but once she understood that there had never been any hope for them, that Hector had been unavailable to her from the beginning, she would be able to recover from her disappointment without any lasting scars. O’Fallon would probably see through the deception, but even if the old man figured out the truth for himself, it was doubtful that he would share it with Nora. He was in the business of protecting his daughter’s feelings, and why should he object to the removal of this inconvenient nobody who had wormed his way into her affections? He would be glad to be rid of Hector, and little by little, as the dust finally settled, young Sweeney would start coming around again, and Nora would return to her senses. In his letter, Hector thanked her for the many kindnesses she had shown him. He would never forget her, he said. She was a shining spirit, a woman above all other women, and just knowing her for the short time he had been in Spokane had permanently changed his life. All true, and yet all false. Every sentence a lie, and yet every word written with conviction. He waited until three o’clock in the morning, and then he walked to her house and slipped the letter under the front door—just as her dead sister, Brigid, on a similar errand two and a half years ago, had once slipped a letter under the door of his house.

H
e tried to kill himself in Montana the next day, Alma said, and three days after that he tried again in Chicago. The first time, he stuck the revolver in his mouth; the second time, he pressed the barrel against his left eye—but in neither instance was he able to go through with it. He had checked into a hotel on South Wabash at the fringes of Chinatown, and after the second failed attempt he walked out into the sweltering June night, looking for a place to get drunk. If he could pour enough liquor into his system, he figured it would give him the courage to jump into the river and drown himself before the night was over. That was the plan, in any case, but not long after he went out in search of the bottle, he stumbled onto something better than death, better than the simple damnation he’d been looking for. Her name was Sylvia Meers, and under her guidance Hector learned that he could go on killing himself without having to finish the job. She was the one who taught him how to drink his own blood, who instructed him in the pleasures of devouring his own heart.

He ran into her in a Rush Street gin mill, standing against the bar as he was about to order his second drink. She wasn’t much to look at, but the price she quoted was so negligible that Hector found himself agreeing to her terms. He would be dead before the night was out anyway, and what could be more fitting than to spend his last hours on earth with a whore?

She took him across the street to a room in the White House Hotel, and once they had finished their business on the bed, she asked him if he would care to have another go at it. Hector declined, explaining that he didn’t have the money for an additional round, but when she told him that there wouldn’t be any extra charge, he shrugged and said why not, then proceeded to mount her for a second time. The encore soon ended with another ejaculation, and Sylvia Meers smiled. She complimented Hector on his performance, and then she asked him if he thought he had the stuff to do it again. Not right away, Hector said, but if she gave him half an hour, it probably wouldn’t be any trouble. That wasn’t good enough, she said. If he could make it in twenty minutes, she would give him another treat, but he would have to get hard again within ten. She looked over at the clock on the bedside table. Ten minutes from now, she said, starting when the second hand swept past the twelve. That was the deal. Ten minutes to get going, and then another ten minutes to finish the job. If he went soft on her at any point along the way, however, he would have to reimburse her for the last time. That was the penalty. Three times for the price of one, or else he coughed up retail for the whole thing. What was it going to be? Did he want to walk away now, or did he think he could come through under pressure?

If she hadn’t been smiling when she asked the question, Hector would have thought she was insane. Whores didn’t give away their services for free, and they didn’t issue challenges to the virility of their clients. That was for the whip specialists and the secret man-haters, the ones who trafficked in suffering and bizarre humiliations, but Meers struck him as a blowsy, lighthearted sort of girl, and she didn’t seem to be taunting him so much as trying to coax him into playing a game. No, not a game exactly, but an experiment, a scientific investigation into the copulative staying power of his twice-exhausted member. Could the dead be resurrected, she seemed to be asking him, and if so, how many times? Guesswork wasn’t allowed. In order to provide conclusive results, the study had to be conducted under the strictest laboratory conditions.

Hector smiled back at her. Meers was sprawled out on the bed with a cigarette in her hand—confident, relaxed, perfectly at home in her nakedness. What was in it for her? Hector wanted to know. Money, she said. Lots of money. That was a good one, Hector said. There she was offering it for nothing, and in the same breath she was talking about getting rich. How dumb was that? Not dumb, she said, clever. There was money to be made, and if he could get it up again in the next nine minutes, he stood to make it with her.

She put out her cigarette and started running her hands over her body, stroking her breasts and smoothing her palms along her stomach, trailing her fingertips along the insides of her thighs and angling them into contact with her pubic hair, her vulva, and her clitoris, spreading herself open for him as her mouth parted and she slid her tongue over her lips.

Hector was not immune to these classic provocations. Slowly but steadily the dead man inched himself out from his grave, and when Meers saw what was happening, she made a naughty little humming sound in her throat, a single prolonged note that seemed to combine both approval and encouragement. Lazarus was breathing again. She rolled over onto her stomach, muttering a string of four-letter words and moaning in feigned arousal, and then she lifted her ass into the air and told him to go into her. Hector wasn’t quite ready, but as he pressed his penis against the scarlet folds of her labia, he stiffened enough to achieve penetration. He didn’t have much left by the end, but something came out of him besides sweat, enough to prove the point at any rate, and when he finally slid off her and sank onto the sheets, she turned and kissed him on the mouth. Seventeen minutes, she said. He had done it three times in less than an hour, and that was all she had been looking for. If he wanted in, she was willing to make him her partner.

Hector had no idea what she was talking about. She explained it, and when he still didn’t understand what she was trying to tell him, she explained it again. There were men, she said, rich men in Chicago, rich men all over the Midwest who were willing to pay good money to watch people fuck. Oh, Hector said, you mean stag films, blue movies. No, Meers replied, none of that fake stuff. Live performances. Real fucking in front of real people.

She had been doing it for a while, she said, but last month her partner had been arrested on a botched breaking-and-entering job. Poor Al. He drank too much and was having trouble getting it up anyway. Even if he hadn’t put himself out of commission, it probably would have been time to start looking for a replacement. In the past couple of weeks, three or four other candidates had survived the test, but none of those fellows could measure up to Hector. She liked his body, she said, she liked the feel of his cock, and she thought he had a terrifically handsome face.

Oh no, Hector said. He would never show his face. If she wanted him to work with her, he would have to wear a mask.

He wasn’t being squeamish. His films had been popular in Chicago, and he couldn’t take the risk of being recognized. Holding up his end of the bargain would be hard enough, but he didn’t see how he could go through with it if he had to perform in a state of fear, if every time he walked in front of an audience he would have to worry that someone was about to call out his name. That was his only condition, he said. Let him hide his face, and she could count him in.