e reaches over and pulls her
onto his lap. She gives him a look.
"She's always like this after church."
"I want breakfast."
"Of course you do, my dove." They get up and scamper down the hall to the
kitchen. Soon Charisse is emitting high-pitched giggles and Gomez is trying to
spank her with the Times Magazine. I sigh and go to my room. The sun is still
shining. In the bathroom I run hot hot water into the huge old tub and strip off
last night's clothes. As I climb in I catch sight of myself in the mirror. I look
almost plump. This cheers me no end, and I sink down into the water feeling like
an Ingres odalisque. Henry loves me. Henry is here, finally, now, finally. And I love him.
I run my hands over my breasts and a thin film of saliva is reaquified by the
water and disperses. Why does everything have to be complicated? Isn't the complicated
part behind us now? I submerge my hair, watch it float around me, dark and
net-like. I never chose Henry, and he never chose me. So how could it be a mistake? Again
I am faced with the fact that we can't know. I lie in the tub, staring at the tile
above my feet, until the water is almost cool. Charisse knocks on the door, asking
if I've died in here and can she please brush her teeth? As I wrap my hair in a
towel I see myself blurred in the mirror by steam and time seems to fold over
onto itself and I see myself as a layering of all my previous days and years and
all the time that is coming and suddenly I feel as though I've become invisible.
But then the feeling is gone as fast as it came and I stand still for a minute and
then I pull on my bathrobe and open the door and go on.
Saturday, December 22, 1991 (Henry is 28, and 33)
Henry: At 5:25 a.m. the doorbell rings, always an evil omen. I stagger to the
intercom and push the button.
"Yeah?"
"Hey. Let me in." I press the button again and the horrible buzzing noise that
signifies Welcome to My Hearth and Home is transmitted over the line.
Forty-five seconds later the elevator clunks and starts to ratchet its way up. I pull
on my robe, I go out and stand in the hall and watch the elevator cables moving
through the little safety-glass window. The cage hovers into sight and stops, and
sure enough, it's me.
He slides open the cage door and steps into the corridor, naked, unshaven,
and sporting really short hair. We quickly cross the empty hall and duck into the
apartment. I close the door and we stand for a moment looking ourselves over.
"Well," I say, just for something to say. "How goes it?"
"So-so. What's the date?"
"December 22, 1991. Saturday"
"Oh-Violent Femmes at the Aragon tonight?"
"Yep."
He laughs. "Shit. What an abysmal evening that was." He walks over to the
bed- my bed-and climbs in, pulls the covers over his head. I plop down beside
him.
"Hey." No response. "When are you from?"
"November 13, 1996. I was on my way to bed. So let me get some sleep, or you
will be sincerely sorry in five years."
This seems reasonable enough. I take off my robe and get back into bed. Now
I'm on the wrong side of the bed, Clare's side, as I think of it these days, because
my doppelganger has commandeered my side.
Everything is subtly different on this side of the bed. It's like when you close
one eye and look at something close up for a while, and then look at it from the
other eye. I lie there doing this, looking at the armchair with my clothes scattered
over it, a peach pit at the bottom of a wine glass on the windowsill, the back of
my right hand. My nails need cutting and the apartment could probably qualify
for Federal Disaster Relief funds. Maybe my extra self will be willing to pitch in,
help out around the house a little, earn his keep. I run my mind over the contents
of the refrigerator and pantry and conclude that we are well provisioned. I am
planning to bring Clare home with me tonight and I'm not sure what to do with
my superfluous body. It occurs to me that Clare might prefer to be with this later
edition of me, since after all they do know each other better. For some reason this
plunges me into a funk. I try to remember that anything subtracted now will be
added later, but I still feel fretful and wish that one of us would just go away.
I ponder my double. He's curled up, hedgehog style, facing away from me,
evidently asleep. I envy him. He is me, but I'm not him, yet. He has been through
five years of a life that's still mysterious to me, still coiled tightly waiting to
spring out and bite. Of course, whatever pleasures are to be had, he's had them;
for me they wait like a box of unpoked chocolates.
I try to consider him with Clare's eyes. Why the short hair? I've always been
fond of my black, wavy, shoulder-length hair; I've been wearing it this way since
high school. But sooner or later, I'm going to chop it off. It occurs to me that the
hair is one of many things that must remind Clare I'm not exactly the man she's
known from earliest childhood. I'm a close approximation she is guiding
surreptitiously toward a me that exists in her mind's eye. What would I be
without her?
Not the man who breathes, slowly, deeply, across the bed from me. His neck
and back undulate with vertebrae, ribs. His skin is smooth, hardly haired, tightly
tacked onto muscles and bones. He is exhausted, and yet sleeps as though at any
moment he may jump up and run. Do I radiate this much tension? I guess so.
Clare complains that I don't relax until I'm dead tired, but actually I am often
relaxed when I'm with her. This older self seems leaner and more weary, more
solid and secure. But with me he can afford to show off: he's got my number so
completely that I can only acquiesce to him, in my own best interests.
It's 7:14 and it's obvious that I'm not going back to sleep. I get out of bed and
turn on the coffee. I pull on underwear and sweatpants and stretch out. Lately my
knees have been sore, so I wrap supports onto them. I pull on socks and lace up
my beater running shoes, probably the cause of the funky knees, and vow to go
buy new shoes tomorrow. I should have asked my guest what the weather was
like out there. Oh, well, December in Chicago: dreadful weather is de rigueur. I
don my ancient Chicago Film Festival T-shirt, a black sweatshirt, and a heavy
orange sweatshirt with a hood that has big Xs on the front and back made of
reflective tape. I grab my gloves and keys and out I go, into the day.
It's not a bad day, as early winter days go. There's very little snow on the
ground, and the wind is toying with it, pushing it here and there. Traffic is
backed up on Dearborn, making a concert of engine noises, and the sky is gray,
slowly lightening into gray.
I lace my keys onto my shoe and decide to run along the lake. I run slowly
east on Delaware to Michigan Avenue, cross the overpass, and begin jogging
beside the bike path, heading north along Oak Street Beach. Only hard-core
runners and cyclists are out today. Lake Michigan is a deep slate color and the
tide is out, revealing a dark brown strip of sand. Seagulls wheel above my head
and far out over the water. I am moving stiffly; cold is unkind to joints, and I'm
slowly realizing that it is pretty cold out here by the lake, probably in the low
twenties. So I run a little slower than usual, warming up, reminding my poor
knees and ankles that their life's work is to carry me far and fast on demand. I can
feel the cold dry air in my lungs, feel my heart serenely pounding, and as I reach
North Avenue I am feeling good and I start to speed up. Running is many things
to me: survival, calmness, euphoria, solitude. It is proof of my corporeal
existence, my ability to control my movement through space if not time, and the
obedience, however temporary, of my body to my will. As I run I displace air,
and things come and go around me, and the path moves like a filmstrip beneath
my feet. I remember, as a child, long before video games and the Web, threading
filmstrips into the dinky projector in the school library and peering into them,
turning the knob that advanced the frame at the sound of a beep. I don't
remember anymore what they looked like, what they were about, but I remember
the smell of the library, and the way the beep made me jump every time. I'm
flying now, that golden feeling, as if I could run right into the air, and I'm
invincible, nothing can stop me, nothing can stop me, nothing, nothing, nothing,
nothing-.
Evening, the same day: (Henry is 28 and 33, Clare is 20)
Clare: We're on our way to the Violent Femmes concert at the Aragon Ballroom.
After some reluctance on Henry's part, which I don't understand because he loves
les Femmes, we are cruising Uptown in search of parking. I loop around and
around, past the Green Mill, the bars, the dimly lit apartment buildings and the
laundromats that look like stage sets. I finally park on Argyle and we walk
shivering down the glassy broken sidewalks. Henry walks fast and I am always a
little out of breath when we walk together. I've noticed that he makes an effort to
match my pace, now. I pull off my glove and put my hand in his coat pocket, and
he puts his arm around my shoulder. I'm excited because Henry and I have never
gone dancing before, and I love the Aragon, in all its decaying faux Spanish
splendor. My Grandma Meagram used to tell me about dancing to the big bands
here in the thirties, when everything was new and lovely and there weren't
people shooting up in the balconies and lakes of piss in the men's room. But c'est
la vie, times change, and we are here.
We stand in line for a few minutes. Henry seems tense, on guard. He holds my
hand, but stares out over the crowd. I take the opportunity to look at him. Henry
is beautiful. His hair is shoulder-length, combed back, black and sleek. He's
cat-like, thin, exuding restlessness and physicality. He looks like he might bite.
Henry is wearing a black overcoat