Tim spoke first. “That’s amazing.”
“You’re finished?” Paris said.
I nodded.
“Haven’t you forgotten something?”
“Have I?”
“What?” said Jonathan. “She was so specific.”
“Yes, she was, wasn’t she?” Paris said. He tapped his fork against his plate three times.
I looked at Sam. “You know that painting, don’t you? What did I leave out?”
“There’s a man in the painting.” Paris answered for Sam.
Sam nodded.
“I can’t believe it,” I said. “Where is he? Way in the back somewhere?”
Sam looked at me. “No, he’s in the foreground far to the left, looking in the direction of the woman. What’s so strange is that you remembered details that had slipped my mind completely—the way she sits, the cloth, the trees . . .”
“I thought I remembered it exactly,” I said.
“You did,” Paris said.
“I blanked out a whole person.”
“Because you entered the painting so completely.”
“What do you mean, Paris?” Rita craned her neck to see him.
I noticed that Laura had her elbows on the table and was resting her chin in her hands. She looked directly at me.
“You became the man,” Paris said. “You stepped into his shoes and promptly deleted him from the painting. He’s a spectator, too, almost a double of the person viewing the picture. For you he was expendable. You saw him but didn’t see him.”
I tried to conjure the missing man.
“I don’t know about that, Paris,” said Jonathan. “People forget all kinds of things.”
I couldn’t remember him at all.
“Not a person who can recall a work of art as well as that.” Paris smiled.
“Are you saying it’s natural to forget the man?” Rita asked Paris.
“In this case it was natural, natural to Iris.”
His comment caused a tiny contraction in my chest. Then it passed. I watched Paris. He was hitting the plate with his fork again.
“Is that art criticism or psychoanalysis?” said Tim.
“A bit of both.” Paris flashed a wide grin across the table.
“You and Iris are close friends?” Laura said this loudly.
Paris looked sharply to his left and stared at her for a couple of seconds. “My God,” he said. “She talks, too.”
Laura looked down at her plate, flustered. I saw her right eye, cheek, and upper lip convulse in a tic. Then it happened again. Rita, who was sitting beside Laura, turned toward her. No one spoke. Sam gave Paris a look of reproof, and I felt the tension of anger in my shoulders and neck. “We hardly know each other.” I spoke in a big voice, looking straight at Laura. “But that’s hardly a deterrent for Paris. One look is enough for him. He’ll tell you all about yourself after two minutes of conversation, and I doubt whether it ever occurs to him that he’s terribly deluded.” I thought I would say more, but I stopped.
Paris stabbed himself with an imaginary knife.
“Laura,” Sam said, putting his hand on her arm. Then he lowered his voice.
Paris leaned across the table and smiled at me. “You’re a pistol,” he said. “I like that. And besides, I deserved it.”
I made a face at him. But his words toppled my certainty. He’s always shifting, I thought, moving out of my reach.
The party ended soon after that, and I continued to reconstruct the painting in my mind, trying to produce the lost man, but I had no luck. I thanked Sam and said goodbye to the other guests. I waved at Paris, who was speaking to Laura, and he rushed over to me.
“I’ll send you a reproduction tomorrow,” he said.
“I can look it up, Paris.”
“No need. I’ll send it by messenger. But you should give me your address.”
I felt Tim beside me, the sleeve of his coat touching mine.
“Really, you don’t have to go to all that trouble.”
He put his mouth near my ear. “You should see it, you know, see him.” He made the word “him” emphatic, and I withdrew.
I wrote my address on a small piece of paper with my phone number and handed it to him. It wasn’t a casual act. Scribbling the letters and numbers, I was aware of my own deliberateness. Paris took the paper from my hand and put it carefully into his wallet.
Tim paid for a taxi back to the Upper West Side. “That Paris,” he said, “is a weird little guy. What a suit!”
“Maybe,” I said, “but he’s no idiot.” I had spoken sharply, and my tone took me by surprise. I was defending Paris.
I softened my voice. “Of course, you’re right. He doesn’t look like anybody else.”
The messenger was deaf. He must have felt the vibrations of the buzzer, because he came in without any problem. I signed the paper he handed me and motioned a thankyou, pulling a book from the padded envelope: Painting in Italy: 1500-1600. Paris had marked the page with a note. “Here it is. Sorry it’s black and white—the best I could do. The real question is: Who is this guy?” The man was standing in the left corner of the painting holding a staff. I looked at him for a long time. He wasn’t familiar to me. It was like seeing him for the first time, and yet everything else was just as I had remembered it. But where had he disappeared to? How many others are there? I thought. People, things, seen and then forgotten, leaving nothing behind them, not even the knowledge that they’re missing. I stared down at the painting and into the mild eyes of the woman and then at her raised leg and the leaves that appeared to mark her flesh with their design.
• • •
The last two weeks of school, I managed to live on next to nothing. A twenty-dollar bill remained in my wallet. Until I found work, I promised myself, I wouldn’t break it. A box of rice, six eggs, and two packages of spaghetti made dinners. I went from one restaurant to another on upper Broadway asking for a waitressing job. They had no openings. I was dogged, repeating the same question in the same dead voice, listening for the rejection, and going back into the street. There’s a kind of desperation people don’t feel and don’t bother to reflect on. That was the case with me. Now I pity that girl pounding the pavement, but when I did it, I had the emotions of a rock. Poverty made me stupid. I spent a lot of time thinking about beautiful shoes, choosing the ones I wanted in a window and then changing my mind. This game kept me occupied, and at first I played it without remorse and without envy for the young women who actually entered the stores, but with each day my desire escalated. Shoes were out of the question. I began to lust after the useless trinkets vendors sold on the street, and the day before I was to see Professor Rose for the last time that spring, I succumbed and bought a comb for my hair, paying for it with the twenty-dollar bill—imitation tortoiseshell with gold trim. It cost three dollars. The purchase was a folly, and I berated myself. It wasn’t the comb I wanted, it was the exchange, the act of parting with money. For a few minutes it brought me a sense of freedom.
I finished The Brutal Boy that night. Poor bloated Uncle Frederick hovers near the chandelier and then goes to pieces. This time the ending made me sad, but I liked the feeling. Tomorrow, I said to myself, I will speak to Professor Rose. I worked on a speech. What I finally came up with, however, was so tepid and veiled that only a clairvoyant would have been able to read any passion in it. Still, every time I rehearsed the words, I lost my breath and gasped for air. By the next morning I was a shuddering wreck of expectation, flying around my apartment like a wounded bird. I wore the comb. My hope made me pathetic, but I comforted myself with the fact that I was my only witness.
Outside Professor Rose’s office, I breathed deeply before I knocked, and then at the sound of his voice I went in. He didn’t look up. His head was bent over some papers on his desk. I hesitated and began. “Professor Rose, I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time how much it has meant for me to work with you . . .”
He looked up, his expression kind. “I?
??m sorry, Miss Vegan,” he said. “What did you say? I’ve been buried in this dissertation, can’t make head or tail of it. It’s pure gibberish as far as I can tell . . .”
I forgot my lines.
“What were you saying, Miss Vegan?”
“Please call me Iris,” I said, my voice faltering. “I’d like you to call me Iris.” It had all gone wrong.
“All right, Iris,” he said, eyeing me with vague amusement.
“I have the whole manuscript,” I said. “It’s all retyped.” There was a hysterical note in my voice that worried me. What was I doing? My stomach made a loud noise. I had skipped dinner the night before and breakfast that morning as penance for the comb. The noise came again, a long rumble.
Professor Rose raised his eyebrows, and one corner of his mouth moved.
I sniffed. I was going to cry. Don’t do it, I said to myself. Don’t do it.
“Iris,” my teacher said. “Look at me. Are you okay?”
I took one look at his sympathetic face and started bawling in earnest.
He waved his hands in the air, repeating a gesture something like an unfinished clap. “Good grief,” he said. “What is the matter?”
“I don’t know,” I wailed, honking into a tissue he had given me.
“Have you eaten breakfast?”
I shook my head.
“Let’s get you something to eat then.” He stood up and grabbed his jacket that was hanging over the back of a chair.
Professor Rose bought me bacon and eggs at Tom’s Restaurant on Broadway and 113th. He watched soberly as I wolfed down my food. I ate everything, scraping up the last specks of egg with my toast.
“You were hungry,” he said to me.
“I have a big appetite in the morning,” I said, avoiding his eyes.
He didn’t say anything to this, and we sat in silence. Then he said, “The university gives emergency loans. Did you know that?”
My face turned hot. I gazed at a woman across from us who was speaking very softly to a large paper bag on the seat next to her. She had bought only coffee. As she spoke to the bag, she stuffed little packages of sugar into her pockets. I looked down at the Formica surface of the table. Professor Rose reached inside his jacket and retrieved a wallet.
“No,” I said to him. “Please.” I put up my hands as if I were warding off a blow.
“Iris,” he said. “As your friend.”
“Please, you don’t understand. I can’t pay you back. I don’t even have a job yet.”
“It’s not a loan.” His voice was soft.
“I can’t,” I said, shaking my head hard.
He pushed four twenty-dollar bills across the table. I stared at the money. With it, I could put off Mr. Then. It was sickening to want it so much. “No,” I said. A sharp pain in my stomach made me shift in the booth.
“Take it,” he said.
I didn’t touch the money. I lifted my face to his. “I’ll miss you,” I said, “this summer. There won’t be anyone to yell at me. I’ll come and visit you in the fall.”
“I won’t be here in the fall. I’m going to North Carolina. I thought you knew that.”
I knew nothing.
“Thank you very much for breakfast,” I said. “It’s the best breakfast I’ve had in a long time.” I stood up. My stomach hurt.
Professor Rose took the money back, but when we were standing near the door ready to leave, he slipped the bills into my pocket. He did it with the deftness of a thief, and I admired his agility. It betrayed a side of him I didn’t know and couldn’t have foreseen. I kept the eighty dollars. It would save me.
Standing outside Tom’s, I looked at him, at his face and hair, at his shoulders in the thin jacket, and I resisted the desire to touch him, to move close to him and put my face to his neck. He looked back at me and shook his head, smiling.
“What are you thinking?” I said to him. I felt better in the air. There was a wind and it hit my face, blowing my hair out behind me.
He didn’t reply. “Listen to me,” he said. “Go to Low Library and get yourself an emergency loan. You should be able to get three hundred dollars. Do it now.”
I nodded.
“Goodbye. I’ll see you when I get back.” He turned fast without giving me his hand and walked away. I watched him leave and then started in the opposite direction. I had gone half a block before I remembered the translation. I ran after him and screamed, “Stop! Stop!” He didn’t hear me. I caught up with him and reached for his arm. He spun around, and I saw a savage face, lined and contorted with emotion. His expression shocked me, and I think I stepped back from him, apologizing without knowing why. “I’m sorry but you forgot this. I wouldn’t know where to send it.” I handed him the manuscript.
He took it with his left hand, and with his free hand he took mine. It wasn’t a handshake. He squeezed my fingers until the bones hurt, looking at me, his mouth set grimly, his eyes steady. Then he let go.
I opened my mouth to speak, but he shook his head and put a finger close to my lips. For a second time, he turned and left me, but that last time, I could see an urgency in his step that hadn’t been there before.
• • •
A year and a half went by before I saw Professor Rose again. I kept the memory of our parting safe, hoarding it as a sign of unspoken feeling. All summer long, I talked to his ghost, telling the shadow what I had wanted to tell the man. For the next three months I fended for myself, working three part-time jobs—as a swimming instructor at the YMCA, a floor model at Bloomingdale’s, and a waitress in a SoHo bar. I liked the swimmers, and the hours I spent with them in the echo chamber of the ancient pool in mid town was a respite from the world. They flapped and puffed and tried hard as I held them one at a time, guiding them through the shallow water. Twice a week I strolled the floors of Bloomingdale’s in a ridiculous getup made from parachute silk—a screaming red jumpsuit, tight and airless, with six zippers. The result of one man’s futuristic fantasies, it wasn’t intended to give dignity to the wearer, but I suffered it for twenty dollars an hour, and whenever I had the chance, I sneaked off to the ladies’ room and read novels in a stall. But most of my money was made at Rudy’s, a pretentious little wine bar on West Broadway that served old salads and soft cheeses to an expensive clientele, and where the uniformly pretty waitresses discussed the finer points of cocaine, Quaaludes, and other intoxicants, arguing for this one or that, with the energy of young philosophers. My fellow workers read my silence on the subject as moral condemnation, but in truth, I’ve always been afraid of drugs. The jolts and tingles that might be gained from these substances don’t attract me. My interest has always been in maintaining balance, not tipping it. Untampered with, my system was already difficult, queasy, on the edge. It didn’t crave interference. Still, I envied those girls their fun, their resilience. They worked hard but were indifferent, shrugging off the nastiness of the customers—their impatience, rudeness, vile sexual jokes. They had a light touch. I, on the other hand, slogged through it, turning rigid at every leer and comment, fighting the urge to retort in kind or dump a glass of Chardonnay over a well-groomed head, and by the end of the night, I felt bumped and bruised. Not once did I consider leaving, however. I needed the job to pay the rent and felt lucky to have it.
One night I looked up and saw Paris sitting at a table near the window. It was late and he was alone. Seeing him made me jump. For me, I thought, he’s a creature of superstition. I have to get over it. He’s never done anything to me. In fact, I rather like him. I walked over to the table and Paris smiled at me, but he seemed less cheerful than before, and I realized I preferred him that way.
“Did you get the book?” he whispered loudly.
“Yes,” I whispered back. “But I don’t have your address or number, so I couldn’t thank you. Thank you.”
He signaled me to move closer. “You saw him this time?” he said.
“I did,” I said aloud.
Paris pretended our conversati
on was secret, moving his eyes back and forth in an exaggerated way. “Shhhh!” he said. “You wouldn’t want them to know.”
I smiled and shook my head. “It’s that serious, is it?”
“Absolutely.”
Paris stayed until I had finished work, and we walked down the street to La Gammelle and shared a bottle of wine. He didn’t exactly tell me the story of his life that night. When I left him, I knew little more than when we first sat down, but he mentioned his mother and a sister and the town in New Jersey where he had grown up. It may have been conscious on his part, but these details grounded him and relieved me of the impression that he had sprung from nowhere fully grown, in a brightly colored suit. During our conversation, Paris leaned across the table often and gestured significantly, only rarely taking his eyes off mine.