What Comes Next Read online

  The child looked down, sulked.

  Curt turned to look out the window when he felt a small pair of hands over his eyes. “Who is it?” a high-pitched voice asked him. “Who do you think it is?”

  “Is it Huckleberry Finn?” Curt asked.

  “No,” the child said, giggling.

  “Is it the three bears?”

  “No-o-o-o,” the child said, “it is not the three bears. It is no bears.”

  Curt thought about who it might be. “Is it John Wilkes Booth?” “No.”

  “I give up,” Curt said. “Tell me who it is.”

  “You have to guess,” the child said, kicking him in the leg. “Guess who it is.”

  “Is it the three pigs?”

  “No pigs, stupid.” Kicking him again.

  “Is it … is it Superman?”

  “Say it again.”

  “Superman.”

  “Again.

  “Superman,” he yelled, to a chorus of laughter from the seat behind.

  “That’s who it is,” the boy said, removing his hands from Curt’s eyes. “It’s the mighty man of steel. You’re a good guesser, all right, when you know the answer.”

  He had to go to the bathroom but worried that the boy would think he was deserting him. While Curt was worrying, burdened by an unlooked-for responsibility, his companion took a bus schedule from the seat in front of him and put it over Curt’s eyes. “Who is it now?” he asked. “Answer, buster, or I’ll drill you full of holes.”

  “That’s enough.” Moving his hand away.

  The child’s face collapsed. He bolted from his seat and ran, bawling, down the aisle, his voice fading like a siren.

  “Come back,” Curt said, embarrassed at being stared at. “I’ll play the game.”

  The child ran up and back in a mock dance. “It wasn’t Superman, stupid,” he yelled at Curt. “You stupid.” He stuck out his tongue.

  The child continued to mock him. “I’ve never seen him before today,” Curt explained to the people around him. “He just happened to be sitting next to me.”

  The bus slowed. The driver came down the aisle in a hurry and, picking up the boy from behind, dragged him to the front. Before Curt could protest, the boy was gently booted out of the automatic door of the bus. Curt saw him land in the dust, miles from the nearest town, as if he had been flying, a terrified look on his face, the face receding, getting larger in the distance, frozen in a shriek.

  He woke in a sweat with no sense of where he was, the room in motion. What had he done? He had a sense of having committed some unforgivable treachery. In his dream. In his life. Feeling the tremors in his chest with the tips of his fingers, he recognized that it would be more painful than he had anticipated. And it would get still worse. How much more could he bear? And what was he doing on the bus? Where did he think he was going?

  He kept his appointment with Carol, although he had been planning all day, even up to the time he left the house to call for her, not to show up, not to risk further involvement. What he really needed was to do something extraordinary, something outside the possibility of anything he had ever—in the darkest fevers of the imagination—conceived of doing. But if he hadn’t conceived of it, how could he know what it was he had to do?

  They couldn’t decide on a movie. Which is to say that Curt couldn’t decide—Carol said she would see anything as long as she hadn’t seen it before, as long as it was supposed to be reasonably good, anything within reason, anything. They couldn’t decide.

  They sat in The Red Chimney on Broadway and 103rd, trying to come to some decision, compromising. “We can watch an old movie on television,” Carol suggested in desperation, “which is a fun thing to do sometimes. Don’t you think?”

  Miserable and lonely, his beard itching, Curt had his heart set on a real movie. “You make the choice,” he said. “Whatever you want to see, we’ll see.” He handed her the Cue magazine as if entrusting his life to her.

  She turned blindly through the pages, distracted, bored. “Why don’t we wait until there’s something we really want to see?” she said. “We don’t have to go, do we? There are other things to do.”

  He might have been—stung by the coincidence—having the same discussion with his wife.

  “What else is there to do?” he asked, the joke on himself—the movie all, or there was nothing. Nothing else he wanted to do. Except move, run, fly, go to a movie. He took the Cue and went through it again as if he expected to find something there that hadn’t been there before. “I wouldn’t mind seeing Torn Curtain,” he said.

  She pouted. “I wasn’t crazy about it the first time, Curt. If you really want to go, I’ll see it again, but … Is it really necessary for you to go?”

  Who could say what was really necessary? What he wanted was necessary at the moment of his wanting it. “Let’s go back to your place,” he said, swatting her on the behind with a rolled-up Cue. It was something he had never done to a woman before.

  “I don’t want to,” she said, hurt at his callousness, but they went.

  Not to bed. They watched an old movie on television between commercials. Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward in David and Bathsheba. Curt dozed on the couch during a deodorant ad, which merged for him into the movie, became the movie, Gregory’s peck (his own) odorless, cool, inoffensive.

  “Should I turn it off?” she asked, Curt dreaming of Susan Hayward, who was seducing him, trying. “Do you want to sleep, sweet?”

  He didn’t know whether he did or not, didn’t know what he wanted—the responsibilities of kingship weighing on him. “I’m watching it,” he said, dreaming his eyes open to watch, wide awake in his dreams.

  “You’re not watching,” she said.

  “I am,” he insisted. Bathsheba, Susan Hayward, Rosemary, his wife, others, fanning him, the breeze perfumed, tapestries on the wall of a deer hunt—Curt the hunter, also the hunted, an arrow embedded in his navel. His shoes coming off, his socks.

  Bathsheba’s kiss. “You can sleep on the sofa,” she said. “Or the bed, whichever you prefer.” Kissing his ear. “Where would you rather sleep?” An arrow grazing his flanks, a flight of arrows.

  “Anywhere,” he dreamed himself saying. “I want to see how it comes out.” Awake for a moment—his eyes flickering, open, shut. The light dying.

  Carol drifted in and out of the room, a performer in the movie, in his dream of the movie, her presence a necessary violation. He missed her when she was gone. It woke him.

  “I think maybe you ought to go home,” she said gently. “This isn’t such a good idea.”

  He had trouble for a moment remembering where home was; wherever it was, he didn’t want to go.

  Stalling, looking for a reprieve, he put his shoes and socks back on, not sure what Carol wanted from him, not sure he wanted to know. “What time is it?” Aware at the same time that it made no difference.

  “Do you know what I was thinking?” she said.

  The question was unexpected. “What?” Not caring, curious.

  She held his hand. “I was thinking that we hardly know each other and …”

  “And?”

  “And—you’ll be angry at my saying it—we’re like an old married couple. We really are.”

  “That’s crap.”

  “You’re very domestic, Curt—you are. Don’t be angry. It’s one of the nicest things about you.”

  In his spirit, where it counted, he had already left, shutting the door irrevocably behind him, running down flights of stairs to the undomesticated freedom of the street.

  He was finishing the coffee Carol had brought him, forcing it down, something inside him burning, unappeasable.

  “Curt?”

  It struck him, looking at Carol, who was (her feet tucked under her) watching him, that he missed his wife, missed at least the fact of having a wife, missed something. It was a feeling he often had, with people or without them. He felt alone.

  “I didn’t mean what I said,” she sai
d, “before. Forget I said it, Curt.”

  Forget what? He was worrying about it, annoyed at himself for misunderstanding, when the phone rang. She took his hand, made no move to answer.

  It kept ringing, persisted beyond reason. “You can answer it,” he said, feeling violated by the phone—whoever it was on the other end his enemy.

  Whoever it was (it didn’t matter), he was jealous of the man who had the presumption to call his woman, this stranger he had made love to, at twenty minutes to twelve—the fact of the call an intimacy in itself. He eased himself up from the couch, stiff, tired, a man who had been sitting, it seemed, in the same position all his life.

  The longer he waited—a matter of decency to say good-bye before he left—the less desirable the idea of leaving became for him. Where was there to go? Yet he had the sense that while he stayed he was missing something that was happening somewhere else. It hurt him to be left out—there was nothing more painful. If he stayed the night, it would be hard for him to leave in the morning, he would hang around out of guilt and obligation. And if he stayed, committed himself to staying, he would be missing something on the outside—the opportunity for some new experience (all that mattered in the history of his life taking place away from where he happened to be).

  Impatient, he went into the bedroom; Carol curled up on the bed, her back to him, holding the phone as if it were a love object, whispering into it. She turned, waved to him.

  “I’m going,” he whispered.

  “Wait,” she mouthed the word, holding out her hand to him.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said into the phone, and, frustrating his sense of having been wronged, hung up.

  “Who was it?” he asked.

  Carol raised her eyebrows at his presumption, studied the hand she was holding. “A friend,” she said, kissing the palm of the hand as if she were offering it a reward, the hand itself. He kissed her on the neck, her flesh like sour milk. A mole winking at him just above the shoulder.

  Curt saw his alternatives—a move was necessary, some move, leave or stay, one way or another. So.

  He got up, took a step toward the door, two steps, returned to the bed. “I want to make love to you,” he announced.

  “No,” she said. “I want you to leave.”

  He had his answer. Yet he had the sense that he could have her if he wanted to, and more than that, that all acts, all possibilities of action, were in the will of his power. And so there was nothing to prove. Freedom lay for him—what a discovery!—in the refusal of action, in the denial of need. “I’ll go,” he said. “It’s late.”

  THIRTEEN

  WHAT DID HE MEAN by leaving him with his wife?

  Her face had turned to rubber, and, frightened, not that she was hurt but that she was not real, he had run. Leaving his briefcase with all that mattered behind. Her blood flowing in thin streams, lips plastic, as if she were having a period in her mouth. He was innocent. He hadn’t done it to her. He would not be put to use to plow her field like any beast of burden, he would not be misused. They had tricked him into wanting what he didn’t want. He didn’t want Parks’ clothes or his wife or the hobbyhorse of their kid 01־ their bed. The dumb shock on her face when his fist struck was enough.

  His problem to keep out of sight, to go to places where no one would question his presence. It was a delicate time. He needed to get some money so he could move. If he was to continue to breathe, he had to get out of the city. The war was getting larger, closer to home. There had been outbreaks of rioting in the major cities. In some places, open insurrection, guerrilla warfare. Tanks in the street.

  He had gone by his house without going in. He had the sense that his induction notice would be there, felt it or knew it, his feelings an odd piece of tubing connected somehow to the fluid of his knowledge. He felt in his blood his time running out.

  If he could stop hating him, it would be easier when the time came to do what he had to do.

  He had not yet revealed himself. Whatever he had done so far was to be something other than he was. To throw the enemy off the track. They thought he was one of them. Sometimes he thought so himself.

  August 1

  QUIET SEA CLIFF

  SHAKEN BY MURDER

  OF SCHOOLGIRL, 17

  “At least he had the decency not to touch her,” the father, who had prayed all morning with his family, told the police. “She died pure as a baby, which we can thank God for.”

  When he saw his father leave, he went in.

  “We’ve been worried to death about you,” she said in welcome. “Your father wanted to call the police. Why didn’t you tell us you were all right? Are you going to give us a kiss?”

  He asked her if she had twenty dollars to give him. A dull buzz at the back of his neck.

  She pecked him with a chicken’s nervous anger, went to look for the purse she had her money in. Something burning in the kitchen. “Look what you made me do.” Smiling as if she didn’t mean it.

  The letter from the government was on his desk waiting for him. His orders. He folded it in half, put it in his pocket without looking inside.

  “Will you wait till Dad gets back, Chrissy? He’ll never forgive me if he finds out that you were here.” She was looking through the wrong purse, dumping mirrors, compacts, wads of Kleenex, shaking her head. “I just can’t remember which purse I used yesterday.”

  Someone was at the outside door.

  “Will you hurry up? I don’t want to see him.” Whatever had been burning fouling the memory of the air.

  “No, I won’t hurry up. I won’t have either of you ordering me around.” She stood like a statue, her hands at her sides. He went by, moving her gently out of the way.

  It was too late. He was coming up the stairs. Carrying a bag of something, his hands full. The Times rolled up under his arm.

  “Well, look who’s here. To what beneficence do I owe this unlooked-for pleasure?”

  He thought of coming down on him—the event in his eyes—rolling him down the stairs with his weight, but stood frozen at the top as he lumbered up. His eyes on his face.

  His eyes murderous. “Don’t worry, I’m leaving,” he said.

  “How can you leave if you haven’t been here?” He stopped two steps from the top, planted himself. “I don’t see him. Do you see him, Mary?”

  “He just came in, Ludwig. I didn’t know he was coming.”

  “What a beauty he is. Look at him. You don’t have to look at him, just smell him. Whose son is he? Who made him?”

  “He’s yours,” she said. “You know he’s yours.”

  “Don’t heap all the credit on me. You had a hand in it yourself.”

  “Will you get out of my way so I can go?” (Most of his life, Christopher remembered, running from him, afraid of what he might do if he went out of control.)

  He came up the two steps and Christopher backed up, making room. Then moved in front of him, in a good position, if he wanted to, to push the old man down the steps.

  “Ludwig, stay away,” she yelled.

  “You would like to kill me, wouldn’t you?”

  “No,” she said. “He wouldn’t. Don’t listen to him.”

  “I wouldn’t do it unless you made me.”

  “Do you hear that, Mary? He’s threatening me now. You’re a witness. Do you hear what he said?”

  “Why are you asking her? You can talk directly to me.”

  “What he doesn’t understand is that to hurt me, he has to hurt himself. He doesn’t understand that I want him to be a humane man not for me—what the hell does it matter to me what he is?—but for his own sake.”

  “He understands, Ludwig,” she said, her voice like the point of a knife on a slate.

  “What does he understand? Decadence he understands. Dirt. Whoring. Look at him. He’s decadent. You can’t be tough and believe in nothing. Do you think he has any feeling for anyone? They want to throw everything out, these kids, and start over. As if nothing existed o
n the face of the earth before them. He has no love.”

  “Look at me.” He stood in front of him, a wall to his sight. “You’re no different. Someday you’re going to die.”

  “I’ll kill him,” his father said, moving away, the mother coming between them. “I don’t want to see him in this house again. I’ll kill the bastard if he returns.”

  “He doesn’t mean that,” she said. “Ludwig, why do you say things you don’t mean?”

  He pushed her out of the way, came for him. “I’ll show him I mean it.” Stopped. His breath in his face. “Do you believe I mean it?” the father said.

  FOURTEEN

  ON BROADWAY and Forty-fifth Street he bumped into a woman—a means of contact—and, apologizing like a gentleman, asked her if she would have a drink with him. The woman gave him a fishy look and went on without answering, glancing back after a while to make sure that she wasn’t being followed. On Forty-third Street, Curt asked a man coming out of the Rialto, which was playing Naked by Design, how he had liked the show. The man shook his head. “Some big knockers in there, fella, some not so big. You pays your money and you takes your choice.” “I haven’t had a big knocker in a long time,” Curt said. “Well, go in,” the man said. “Give yourself a treat.”

  Curt was about to go in, a treat what he was looking for, but then an exotic-looking woman in purple crazy-pants passed across the street, and he went after her instead. He ran, dodging cars, to catch up with her.

  “I’ve been admiring your outfit,” he said, tapping her on the shoulder.

  “I’d sell it to you,” she said, glancing at him as if he were under glass, “but I don’t think it would fit.”

  In acknowledgment of her joke, Curt patted her ass, letting his fingers range like explorers over the terrain.

  “You’re pretty goddamn free with your hands, aren’t you?” she said, looking neither amused nor angry, the voice bored with its own mock excitement, full of distant and terrifying promise.

  “I’m free as hell,” Curt said, aware, though it made no difference, that the woman was considerably older than his first impression had indicated—in her forties perhaps, her face a mask of heavy makeup.