The Game Player (22 page)

My hands became frantic to touch all of her while she convulsed her body to suck in my penetration, pockets of our bodies smacking from the light sweats that covered both our bodies. I reached for her buttocks, separating them with my hands, my fingers, sticky from the ooze dripping down, clawed to touch the small, hot forbidden hole. “Your beautiful round breasts! Your perfect, perfect body,” my voice, harsh and in an agony of hoarseness, was saying. It was just part of the din of our union now, unthinking and alien. “I want to taste you forever,” I was screaming as her breath began to catch, her chest heaving in time with her pelvis. Her hands suddenly pushed me even deeper, her fingernails digging insistently into my skin. And she was gasping now, suddenly rigid, moaning as if I had wounded her mortally. I had one moment of lucidity and then something grabbed my stomach and yanked.

I flowed out, not in ejaculations from a single hardened faucet, but a hot steady urination of my soul.

9

Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale,

—William Shakespeare

I
AM STILL
a young man and can therefore hope for another night as enchanting, serene, and exciting as was my first with Karen. We talked, in the dark, in bed, until dawn. I listened to her tell, with a touch of apprehension, her life story. She had nothing to fear, neither the greatest horror story, nor the most boring, could have diminished my love or my intention—decided upon almost immediately after orgasm—to offer her any token or legalization of commitment that she might demand. And yet, in spite of this possessive urge, I was perfectly secure about her feelings towards me. When she asked me, somewhat timidly, what I wanted from my work, I told her, the first person, apart from Brian, to know the truth.

We fucked again, sometime during the time between the black of night and the intense blue preceding sunrise; we were slow, quiet, and tender this time—a much more normal fuck as compared to the intensity of the first, but another unique one for me. It was a kind of magical conversation.

And just as any fatigue would have been natural, our remarkable alertness didn't prevent us from sleeping once we decided to do so. When Brian entered the room in the morning, my eyes were open in seconds, not shying from the harsh sunlight. He remained true to form—there was no reaction to Karen's hunched form next to and a trifle entangled with mine. I woke her when he left and had fun dressing and washing with her dogging me; she held her puffed face up to mine for kisses, and teased me for my disheveled and sleepy morning procedures.

We were greeted by sounds of loud and cheerful cleaning, the rich smell of coffee brewing, and Brian, in brilliantly white briefs, his lean, muscled body bounding between the living room and kitchen: he carried glasses and plates, moved chairs, rinsed and loaded dishware into the dishwasher, and wiped the tables with hard, broad gestures.

Karen and I laughed watching him and he appreciated that by giving us his almost invisible smile. Joan joined us shortly and we had breakfast: the self-satisfied and joking breakfast only young couples are permitted.

Karen and I didn't even discuss, when it was time for her to leave, whether we would meet for the evening, just how and when. Joan went with her and Brian said, the moment they were gone, “You had a real good time, didn't you?”

I was wary of his question and I wondered why even before answering. “I sure did. This is the big one.”

He smiled and looked away with the amused confidence of a wiser person. “That's nice. You've been needing something like that.”

“Well, doesn't everyone?” I asked petulantly.

“Absolutely. Should be supplied at the age of sixteen to every man and woman.” He smoked his cigarette slowly, thoughtfully. And I remembered moments of my lovemaking proudly, becoming absorbed, so that his next statement startled me. “I don't know what I'm gonna do about bread.”

“I thought you had a bunch of money. I saved enough for my rent,” I said, wagging a finger at him.

“The wisdom of a small mind,” he answered. “I didn't. So I'm going to have to hustle something.”

“Well, you're going to finish Phi Beta, right? Isn't that enough for your father? What more could you have done?”

“You know the answer to that, Howard. There's still the LSAT and besides, it's true that as long as I don't crack up next year on the Project, I'll make Phi Beta, but I feel like blowing the whole thing.”

No endurance, I thought to myself, it's always been the curse of his brilliance. At least I can finish things. “Well,” I said, “I warned you that if we didn't start giving them back some money, they'd quit playing.”

“That's just a kind of cheating, Howard.”

“It's a generous kind of cheating.”

“No, it's not, because it seduces them into losing more money. Anyway, it's bad because it degrades performance. I'd never do it. If you're good, you're good.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “Apart from the money, I think I'm glad it's over. It was getting boring.”

Brian's head turned to look at me with sudden attentiveness in the middle of my sentence and he stared openly for a few moments after I finished. “Now, you think about that for a second. Do you mean it?”

Again, I felt cautious and constrained about an answer. I hadn't felt that with him since our boyhood. “I just mean,” I said with deliberation, “that I wouldn't mind a layoff.” Brian nodded, but with reserve, and I changed the subject. “I thought you've accumulated enough credits to be almost ready to graduate.”

“Yeah, I only have to do the year minimum. But if I slacked off when it's in the bag that might hurt me with professors for the big honors. They don't just want you to produce, they want you to kiss their ass with your deep and abiding love for the wisdom they provide.”

“Yeah, but even if you don't get all that, you'll still get into any law school you want as long as you score above seven-fifty on the LSAT, right?”

He sat up, rubbing a thigh rapidly. “If I graduate, as I can, absolutely tops in the class, I mean sweeping everything, then my father is going to give me a big chunk of money. He's promised that much, though he hasn't named a figure. I'd guess it would be a minimum of thirty thousand.”

“Wow. You mean just outright?”

“Yeah, it's really a big deal, Howard,” he said, drawling his words. “He pays his personal secretary that much for not telling my mother whom he's fucking. Thirty thousand dollars to him is peanuts. There's already three quarters of a million dollars sitting in a trust for me.”

“You mean, money he doesn't use? It's just sitting and accumulating?”

Brian's eyes watched me carefully while he nodded yes. “That's a secret I expect you to keep. I don't want any of the girls to know about it.”

I put up a hand in a gesture of promise. “I won't. That's your inheritance?”

“If he dies before my mother, which I doubt, I get that and she gets a sum that I haven't been told, for her life, that devolves upon me on her death. In other words, she can spend all of it, but she can't will it to someone else.”

“What's the point of that?”

“It's not distrust. In the long run, that works out better for taxes.”

“You just found this out?” I asked, because Mr. Stoppard had dropped by on his way to a business meeting elsewhere the previous week and had had lunch with Brian.

Brian looked puzzled for a moment and brushed back his black hair. “No. He told me this just before I left for college. Part of a talk about what he expected and hoped for me.”

“Well, why did you wait till now to tell me?”

He shook his head as if slapped. “What?” he said, with a smile. “You act as if I insulted you by not doing it.”

“Well—” I stopped and sighed with frustration. “I just don't understand. If you trust me, then you would tell me immediately. And if you don't, then you would never tell me.”

He slumped back in his chair, grunted with amusement, and rubbed his eyes vehemently. His hands slightly muffled his voice. “That's the most self-centered analysis I've ever heard.” He removed his hands and looked at me questioningly. “It never occurred to me that you had a right to know, unless I felt I had to tell you. What reason could I have to tell you? Bragging?” He grunted. “No doubt B.B. would, but you don't respect B.B. very much. I told you the important thing, which is that my father wouldn't give me money unless I got top grades.”

“Okay, you're right about part of that. But if it's so unimportant, why tell me now? We've had countless idle conversations about money. Why this one?”

He stared lifelessly for a moment and then, his eyes glittering, began to smile. “You're in love with Karen, right?”

I felt constrained immediately. “Brian, I hardly know her.”

He burst into laughter: self-loving, deep chuckles that would peak to cackles. “What? What?” I kept asking him while he seemed unable to stop, getting up and bending over as if to catch his breath. He quieted finally and stood in the doorway, sunlight mottling his body, his hands on his hips. “So, Howard,” he said, his voice booming, “we all have things to discuss cautiously, if at all.”

During the next few days, while Karen and I discovered that we shared enjoyment of the things couples should enjoy, and that our differences were eased without too much fuss, Brian, in a terse phone conversation, and apparently without any cause, told Joan that he didn't wish to see her anymore. If we brought home food, he would join us, otherwise, we would find him alone, lying on the couch watching television. When his friends, including other girl friends, called, he would groan and walk slowly to the phone, his voice hoarse and enervated while he explained that he was too busy studying for company.

He would still be lying on the couch when we went to bed in my room, and the reflection of the wavering television light could be seen during our three in the morning excursions to the bathroom and kitchen. Apparently he was watching until the stations signed off (about five in the morning) and then getting into bed, because he stopped waking me up in the morning, and would still be sleeping when I left for the day. The fourth night that we found him like this, Karen said, “Again? God, Brian, you're going to be one of the all-time TV experts.”

“Hello,” Brian said without moving.

“How can you stand to watch that much?” she insisted.

He turned over to look at us. His face was covered by several days' growth of his thick black beard, his eyes shadowed from the daytime sleeping schedule, and his shirt wrinkled like crumpled paper from being unchanged. “I need this?” he said to me, his smile even more twisted because the hair surrounding emphasized it. “A den mother? Don't worry,” he said, his cold eyes now on her, “I've already got Howard for that.”

“So you can say more than a sentence at a time,” I said, annoyed that he had dismissed her rudely.

“I can speak volumes. If I'm bothering you, I can take the set into my room.”

“It might be nice,” Karen said in a singsong voice, “to spend an evening without the television on.”

While I was feeling the beginning of the panic that a confrontation between them would make unbearable, Brian took a long look at her—a steady, remorseless investigation that made Karen flush a trifle and shift restlessly. “You know what I mean?” she added meekly. Brian was now lying face up, perfectly relaxed, and just as I was about to speak, the springs creaked and he was flopping up to his feet as if the couch were a trampoline, his feet catching the ground, and his body righting itself with a groan. I jumped back a bit and we both watched stupidly while he unplugged the television with a hard yank, pushed the on-off button in with the heel of his hand, shut the antennas in two sweeping gestures, and carried the Trinitron precipitously by its handle, the set swaying from his fast walk. “Good night,” I said to his retreating form.

“Oh, by all means, good night,” he said in a lightly sarcastic voice that had no trace of the effort of carrying.

He couldn't have influenced our evening more than by this departure. Karen felt that she had done something wrong and asked me if I agreed. I told her he had been rude to her and that had bothered me, but it was his apartment, and if he wanted to watch television, we had nothing to say about it. “I didn't mean he couldn't,” she complained with a petulant look. “I was only making a suggestion.” I told her I knew that, but I didn't, it
had
sounded like an order. This was merely the first of a series of incidents in which Brian's presence seemed to turn Karen into a ghastly stereotype of a shrew: her voice insincere, her demands petulant, and her resentment that of a five-year-old sibling.

From the beginning, I made a mistake: I didn't tell her that she was jealous of him. Instead, I would agree that he was difficult, making excuses for him, saying he was very close to me, like a brother, and just as I might expect her to put up with a mentally deranged relative, she had to accept his behavior. Maybe I erred because, over the years, I was the only person who did understand some things about Brian (no one knew the truth) and since I couldn't invite her into our friendship, I felt it had to be force-fed.

But I think even if I had exhibited a maturity about this situation that was probably beyond me, she would never have liked him. She was one of those people who were maddened by his independence. Her attitude bore a striking resemblance to that of people who can't understand the value of a cat as a pet: “They don't come to you like a dog. They just sit on top of things and stare.” Karen forms intimacies with people from discussions about confusions and insecurities. Formed human beings, sure of their identity and concerned only with the accomplishment of their potential, offend and disquiet her. They're like her parents and carry with them the atmosphere of disapproval and unapproachability that she felt during childhood. Her parents were covering a lousy marriage and she associates all reserve with dishonesty and pain. When she asked about Brian's family and I thoughtlessly presented a Gothic picture, there was no longer any hope that she could break through the Freudian clichés she labeled him with, and see that he was simply a person without self-pity, or any blockage of the channel between anger and self-realization.