Heathern Read Free

in the back. "Precautions. Can't
trust nobody on faith."
    Not tonight, he'd read.
    I agreed to drink with them after work; so long as Susie
accompanied he usually kept his passions reined. During
this season, I settled for such company as would keep me.
Through the years, spending the Thanksgiving-Hanukkah
-Christmas circuit carving turkey rolls instead of turkeys,
decorating bushes rather than trees, I should have convinced myself without reminder that each new year's
holidays might prove more memorable than those preceding, but no; the mind rejects too many lies as the body
rejects too many sleeping pills.
    "What a beautiful sunset," Thatcher remarked as we rode
the few blocks from Wall Street to Fraunces Tavern. Slivers
of sky between buildings showed half-glimpsed glory. Old downtown's narrow streets held a medieval feel, hemmed
in as they were by stone battlements and wide walls.
Evening's lingering heat slapped our faces as we stepped
from our car; we saw two visigoths who'd long before
invaded the city, bond traders giggling as over a bug in a
bottle while they poked umbrellas into a trashbag. The bag
groaned; the man within hid his face with his hands.

    "Amateurs," Thatcher muttered, evincing as much concern as I or anyone I knew evinced toward those who'd lost
that we might win. Thatcher's snow queen, Bernard
laughingly called me: ice princess, glacier girl, the hoar
with heart of frost. Was I better than Thatcher for having
noticed but not remarking? That was another lie I couldn't
keep down. My generation's zeitgeist preferred to haunt its
halls alone, without undue consideration of an unlikely
heaven: therefore, like all, I saw but didn't see, cared yet
didn't care; couldn't stop long enough to think about what I
might do if I tried; convinced myself that there was nothing
I could do, and so did nothing.
    Susie took Thatcher's arm as we entered, holding him
tight; he didn't pull away. He'd had involvements before
ours, yet Susie never left him, nor did he want her to go.
They never spoke of their unavoidable symbiosis, as if
embarrassed to admit that neither could have dealt with
their world by themselves. There would be no breaking of
their ring from without; I'd tired of battering myself, trying.
Soon enough, I believed-wanted to believe-I would fly
away from it all, not knowing how, not knowing when;
wanting in the meantime only to let what moments we had
left together pass silently away, that he wouldn't notice I'd
left till I'd gone.
    Our drinks were on our booth's table. Gus sipped from
each before we drank. He and Jake-who had accompanied us here-took the outer seats, walling us off from the
crowd. Jake brushed debris from my corner of the booth and I sat across from the Drydens. Susie looked at her-husband
as if recounting the ways she'd loved him.

    "I hate this place," she said. "These animals."
    "Can't isolate yourself all the time, darlin'," he said.
"Look at poor old Elvis. It's the courtiers kill the king."
    "Fuck Elvis," she said. "Look at you. Mister man of the
people. Some man."
    "Some people." Something brushed my foot; I jerked it
away, having seen rats in better places. Beneath oak beams,
amid tankards and pewter and steel engravings were hundreds at drudgeful play. A post-teen broker barked, crawling on his fours, his tie sweeping the floor; two women
armwrestled, their flowcharts forgotten, keeping their
sneakered feet firm against their chairs as each struggled to
toss the other; I-bankers shook breadsticks at one another
as if casting untried spells. An aging mentor at barside held
forth before his adminassists and executaries, forking his
hand into a cheese-ball, licking his fingers clean as he
spoke. Any abomination was excusable so long as you lived
in New York.
    Gus illustrated a proper table setting with the unused
dinnerware for Jake; to his mind social graces were as
essential as social control. "Salad fork always to the left of