was all music to me. I grabbed Billy’s arm. “Let the wives talk, Billy,” I said. “I’ll buy you a cocktail.”
Annette had a buffet that would have run twelve pages in Ladies’ Home Journal. It started with a salmon the size of a dog and ended forty feet later with champagne and hot buttered rum. Luckily, Hugo was down at that end of the table sipping his scotch, and when I nodded at it he took us in the kitchen and poured us coffee cups full of Chivas, saying, “I never drank a party drink in my life. It’s February and this,” he held up his glass, “is scotch. Are you two going skating?”
And we did go skating, Hugo, Bill, and I. We had another cup of scotch and then clambered down with Hugo’s hockey equipment, sticks and pucks. The moon had come out full and throwing down a couple of sweaters on one side and two hats on the other, we had a rink. For some reason we had constructed it such that the bonfire was at center ice, and the game was full of wonderful breathers while some hero stickhandled the puck back out of the embers. Then, finally, Bill himself skated full bore into the flames. He rolled out unhurt, but he had lost the puck fully in the fire and we stood around consoling him while it melted somewhere in the inferno.
“Showboat,” Hugo said, smiling. He looked at me and said, “Remember the night Billy skated into the bonfire?” and he laughed, so sure and so happy to be on the spot as a memory was created, his party a success.
“And he did it showing off!” I said.
“And then he wanted more scotch,” Billy said, getting up. “He lost the puck and then wanted more scotch. And none of your party drinks!”
Back at the mansion, the party had more than half fallen apart, but Annette and Story and Ruth were in the study grinding something over, so Hugo did pour us some more scotch. We stood around the kitchen like prep school kids when Hugo said, “Let me show you something.”
Now, it’s here, I guess, where I started to see again. We were all red-faced from the cold and warm from the scotch, and when Hugo ushered me in front of the telescope, it was time to see. He had lined it up so that the full moon filled the lens, and for a moment I was flooded with vertigo, my depth perception thrown away. Then it all twisted into a focus so sharp I winced. The moon, the ocher plains, the pale blue seas, and then like something scratching across my very eyeball, the geese. Canadian geese were flying across the moon. Four clipped the bottom. Two more, sliding. Silence. My heart in my neck. And then two full tiers, a double-winged vee of geese raking the moon, swimming into the heat which rose into my eye and blurred.
I stood away from the telescope.
“Did you see them? They must be three miles high!” Hugo took my arm. It was dark in his study. Billy bent to the eyepiece. I could hear the women murmuring below us in the den. “Do you know how far, how many miles they’ll go tonight?”
And it was later, late into that Sunday night—Monday morning—that the seeing began in earnest. Story drove me home, and though it took a few minutes to rid her mind of township business, I achieved it, and we moved into the postures of lovemaking, and I saw her face, her eyes, her navel, and then just before my eyes rolled up into my head, I saw my three fingers coming over Story’s shoulder, like three old men witnessing giants at play. Story kissed me and rolled into sleep. My eyes would not quit.
I walked through my house naked for a while, as is the right of any homeowner, ending up on the small brick porch onto the backyard with my father’s Navy binoculars in my hand. The air was still and frigid, but I stood with the glasses on the moon. It was wonderfully clear to me there as the bricks froze my feet and my genitals shrank and numbed in the frosty night: sperm were swimming across the moon, and on the round world I had a lot to do.
THREE
FOR THREE months Story had been keeping the basal
Annette had a buffet that would have run twelve pages in Ladies’ Home Journal. It started with a salmon the size of a dog and ended forty feet later with champagne and hot buttered rum. Luckily, Hugo was down at that end of the table sipping his scotch, and when I nodded at it he took us in the kitchen and poured us coffee cups full of Chivas, saying, “I never drank a party drink in my life. It’s February and this,” he held up his glass, “is scotch. Are you two going skating?”
And we did go skating, Hugo, Bill, and I. We had another cup of scotch and then clambered down with Hugo’s hockey equipment, sticks and pucks. The moon had come out full and throwing down a couple of sweaters on one side and two hats on the other, we had a rink. For some reason we had constructed it such that the bonfire was at center ice, and the game was full of wonderful breathers while some hero stickhandled the puck back out of the embers. Then, finally, Bill himself skated full bore into the flames. He rolled out unhurt, but he had lost the puck fully in the fire and we stood around consoling him while it melted somewhere in the inferno.
“Showboat,” Hugo said, smiling. He looked at me and said, “Remember the night Billy skated into the bonfire?” and he laughed, so sure and so happy to be on the spot as a memory was created, his party a success.
“And he did it showing off!” I said.
“And then he wanted more scotch,” Billy said, getting up. “He lost the puck and then wanted more scotch. And none of your party drinks!”
Back at the mansion, the party had more than half fallen apart, but Annette and Story and Ruth were in the study grinding something over, so Hugo did pour us some more scotch. We stood around the kitchen like prep school kids when Hugo said, “Let me show you something.”
Now, it’s here, I guess, where I started to see again. We were all red-faced from the cold and warm from the scotch, and when Hugo ushered me in front of the telescope, it was time to see. He had lined it up so that the full moon filled the lens, and for a moment I was flooded with vertigo, my depth perception thrown away. Then it all twisted into a focus so sharp I winced. The moon, the ocher plains, the pale blue seas, and then like something scratching across my very eyeball, the geese. Canadian geese were flying across the moon. Four clipped the bottom. Two more, sliding. Silence. My heart in my neck. And then two full tiers, a double-winged vee of geese raking the moon, swimming into the heat which rose into my eye and blurred.
I stood away from the telescope.
“Did you see them? They must be three miles high!” Hugo took my arm. It was dark in his study. Billy bent to the eyepiece. I could hear the women murmuring below us in the den. “Do you know how far, how many miles they’ll go tonight?”
And it was later, late into that Sunday night—Monday morning—that the seeing began in earnest. Story drove me home, and though it took a few minutes to rid her mind of township business, I achieved it, and we moved into the postures of lovemaking, and I saw her face, her eyes, her navel, and then just before my eyes rolled up into my head, I saw my three fingers coming over Story’s shoulder, like three old men witnessing giants at play. Story kissed me and rolled into sleep. My eyes would not quit.
I walked through my house naked for a while, as is the right of any homeowner, ending up on the small brick porch onto the backyard with my father’s Navy binoculars in my hand. The air was still and frigid, but I stood with the glasses on the moon. It was wonderfully clear to me there as the bricks froze my feet and my genitals shrank and numbed in the frosty night: sperm were swimming across the moon, and on the round world I had a lot to do.
THREE
FOR THREE months Story had been keeping the basal
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