When he looked up again, he realized he’d sauntered downtown and was walking along the edges of Times Square. He glanced around, looking for a familiar landmark. In the years before he met Russell, he’d often wandered down here when he was feeling lonely, stuck in his work, or swamped with unspecified anxiety. He would stroll through the movie theaters, the bookstores and arcades, the strip joints, until he was anesthetized by the sweet stink of flesh and the heat of anonymous intimacy. Nothing looked familiar today. The community of furtive men—bound together by rampaging loneliness and lust—had been replaced by groups of shopping and sun-dazed tourists. Families in loud, insignia-emblazoned T-shirts and sneakers swarmed the streets, clutching shopping bags, carrying children, stupefied by spending. It was all supposed to be so much more upright, now that the porn and prostitutes had been driven out; yet there was something far more obscene about this vulgar hunger for stunningly pointless stuff. And at least the cock and pussy hounds of old had the decency to display a little guilt and self-hatred.

He should leap on the subway, go to Russell’s store, tell all and make amends. But like Peter, he’d have to do it when he was ready, and he wasn’t ready yet.

When he looked up again, he was standing in front of the Disney store. The doors were open, and they seemed to be sucking their victims in, right off the street. It made the peepshows and plastic penises, the inept photography of the porn magazines and grimy amateurism of the banished theaters seem quaint, cozy, and downright wholesome. In the five years he’d been with Russell, the world had changed completely. If he’d ended up here with the unconscious intention of avenging Russell’s betrayal of him, he’d come to the wrong place. But there was cool air blowing out from the store, and inside he could hear the siren call of lush, cheap music. If you couldn’t fight your own fate, how could you possibly hope to fight Disney? Maybe there was some childish thing in there he could buy as a present for irascible Gerald.

Fourteen

Specific Plans

1.

If Dr. Berman had been merely overweight, it was very likely Jane wouldn’t have noticed. She herself made no claims of physical perfection, and she rarely scrutinized bodies, male or female, looking for flaws. These days, people talked about an extra ten or twenty pounds as if they were a sign of emotional or moral decay, which just went to show how prudish and puritanical the country had become. But Berman was obese in an exaggerated way she found distracting. As soon as she walked into his office last summer, after a two-year vacation from treatment, she could tell that he’d added another thirty or forty pounds to his frame.