Dying Inside

“I knew it. I didn’t know, but I really did, all along. And it explains so much. Why I always felt dirty when I was a kid and you were around. Why I felt as if anything I did was likely to show up in tomorrow’s newspapers. I never had any privacy, even when I was locked in the bathroom. I didn’t feel private.” She shuddered. “I hope I never see you again, Duv. Now that I know what you are. I wish I never had seen you. If I ever catch you poking around in my head after this, I’ll cut your balls off. Got that? I’ll cut your balls off. Now clear out of here so I can get dressed.”

I stumbled away. In the bathroom I gripped the cold edge of the sink and leaned close to the mirror to study my flushed, flustered face. I looked stunned and dazed, my features as rigid as though I had had a stroke. I know that you got laid last night. Why had I told her that? An accident? The words spilling out of me because she had goaded me past the point of prudence? But I had never let anyone push me into a revelation like that before. There are no accidents, Freud said. There are never any slips of the tongue. Everything’s deliberate, on one level or another. I must have said what I did to Judith because I wanted her at last to know the truth about me. But why? Why her? I had already told Nyquist, yes; there could be no risk in that; but I had never admitted it to anyone else. Always taken such great pains to conceal it, eh, Miss Mueller? And now Judith knew. I had given her a weapon with which she could destroy me.

* * *

I had given her a weapon. How strange that she never chose to use it.

SIXTEEN.

Nyquist said, “The real trouble with you, Selig, is that you’re a deeply religious man who doesn’t happen to believe in God.” Nyquist was always saying things like that, and Selig never could be sure whether he meant them or was just playing verbal games. No matter how deeply Selig penetrated the other man’s soul, he never could be sure of anything. Nyquist was too wily, too elusive.

Playing it safe, Selig said nothing. He stood with his back to Nyquist, looking out the window. Snow was falling. The narrow streets below were choked with it; not even the municipal snowplows could get through, and a strange serenity prevailed. High winds whipped the drifts about. Parked cars were disappearing under the white blanket. A few janitors from the apartment houses on the block were out, digging manfully. It had been snowing on and off for three days. Snow was general all over the Northeast. It was falling on every filthy city, on the arid suburbs, falling softly upon the Appalachians and, farther eastward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Atlantic waves. Nothing was moving in New York City. Everything was shut down: office buildings, schools, the concert halls, the theaters. The railroads were out of commission and the highways were blocked. There was no action at the airports. Basketball games were being canceled at Madison Square Garden. Unable to get to work, Selig had waited out most of the blizzard in Nyquist’s apartment, spending so much time with him that by now he had come to find his friend’s company stifling and oppressive. What earlier had seemed amusing and charming in Nyquist had become abrasive and tricksy. Nyquist’s bland self-assurance conveyed itself now as smugness; his casual forays into Selig’s mind were no longer affectionate gestures of intimacy, but rather, conscious acts of aggression. His habit of repeating aloud what Selig was thinking was increasingly irritating, and there seemed to be no deterring him from that. Here he was doing it again, plucking a quotation from Selig’s head and declaiming it in half-mocking tones: “Ah. How pretty. ‘His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.’ I like that. What is it, David?”

“James Joyce,” said Selig sourly. “ ‘The Dead,’ from Dubliners. I asked you yesterday not to do that.”

“I envy the breadth and depth of your culture. I like to borrow fancy quotations from you.”

“Fine. Do you always have to play them back at me?”

Nyquist, gesturing broadly as Selig stepped away from the window, humbly turned his palms outward. “I’m sorry. I forgot you didn’t like it.”

“You never forget a thing, Tom. You never do anything accidentally.” Then, guilty over his peevishness: “Christ, I’ve had about enough snow!”

“Snow is general,” said Nyquist. “It isn’t ever going to stop. What are we going to do today?”

“The same as yesterday and the day before, I imagine. Sitting around watching the snowflakes fall and listening to records and getting sloshed.”

“How about getting laid?”

“I don’t think you’re my type,” Selig said.

Nyquist flashed an empty smile. “Funny man. I mean finding a couple of ladies marooned somewhere in this building and inviting them to a little party. You don’t think there are two available ladies under this roof?”