In the room next to me, the stockbroker and the judge’s wife were making love. She was begging, in a voice muted by the wall that separated us, “Please, please… Now, now… Oh, yes. Yes, yes yes.” There was a sudden, furious slapping of the headboard against the wall. The judge’s wife cried once. I could hear her inhale against the pouring from her body. The sudden, furious slapping of the headboard stopped.

I wondered if somewhere, nearby, Lila was smiling and breathing deeply, trying to catch the scent of sex.

CHAPTER

7
 

I SLEPT, FINALLY, SENSING THAT I WAS SOMEHOW MORE EXhausted than the stockbroker and the judge’s wife. I believed I would dream of them, see them as a voyeur watching erotic movies in a dark room. I would peer at them as they caressed and moved over one another like powerful animals at sex play. I would see the oils of their skin shining in candlelight. I would watch their mouths at feast.

I did not dream of them. I dreamed, instead, of Amy Lourie. And in the way of dreams—surreal moments so startlingly clear you know they have happened or will happen or should happen—I was sitting with her in the Galli-Curci Theater in Margaretville and her hand was in my hand, milking my fingers with her fingers. It was two days after being with her at the birch tree on the mountain.

Carter had arranged it in the bold manner that was his personality. A group of us were going to the movies on Tuesday night, he had said to Amy in the presence of her parents as we served lunch. Would she like to go?

“Why don’t you?” urged Joel Lourie. “Get away from the old people for a night.”

“And who would be going?” Evelyn Lourie asked quietly.

“Just a group,” Carter replied. He glanced at me as I served coffee. “Me, two or three others who work at some of the other places around here. Bobo, I think. Are you still going, Bobo?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”

“We do it all the time,” Carter added casually and pleasantly. “We never know who’s going. Whoever shows up at Arch’s.”

“Oh,” Evelyn Lourie said. She smiled at me. Her eyes lingered, questioning.

“I’d love to,” Amy said cheerfully. She did not look at me, but she knew what Carter was doing.

That night, in The Cave, Carter leaned over from his top bunk and said, “I’ve been thinking about it, Bobo. You owe me for tomorrow night.”

“I know. And I’m sure you won’t let me forget it,” I replied.

“No, you don’t know. Not yet,” Carter said. “I plan to slit my wrists in front of both of you. You’ll be sorry when I’m dead.” He leaned back on his bed. I saw a cloud of smoke from his Marlboro rolling toward the ceiling.

“Carter?”

“Yeah.”