Chapter Thirteen
It is 2008 and he, sometimes Adagio and sometimes Nathaniel or various nicknames, still doesn't even have a consistent label for himself. Not even a consistent name has stuck on him all these 18 years; and the half hour that he has sat in the library there is that same mental numbness of all other previous half hours. It is numbness as empty as a pit in the mouth from an extracted tooth. He knows that most men wander around the world untouched, unknown, not touching, and not known or knowing. He knows that such men use girlfriends to prop themselves up in order to feel fortified outwardly in 6 billion mostly "nobodies" within a universe of continual flux. He knows the selfish jaundice of both men and women in a relationship and how with any length of time it inflicts the relationship with the disease that is an extension of the two. He has been there and done that. He had one steady girlfriend but the relationship was hard to maintain when swirling colorful treats in many edible shapes, smells, and voices of varying feminine nectar fell through the orifices of his senses. It does not bother him to be no one special. It does not bother him to be the same as "regular guys" although most of them have consistent names, nicknames, or aliases they do not cower from. They make up the masses; and the masses are a brute force to which he is one of the billions. When a thing or a way of being exists in large numbers, he supposes, it is bound to be right. At a large table in front of an open book, with fingertips he grazes an area of skin above his upper lip. The facial stubble, when he rubs it, gives him extra reinforcement in his vain embellishment of masculinity. It is a vain reinforcement that the litter of pornography he perused like a philomath in his car a few minutes before entering the library did not do. Even the insouciance that he artificially concocted there with the puff of a cigarette while waiting for the rain to soften enough to drive did not make him more conscious of his male vigor than a brief feel of facial stubble. There is little beyond sexual energy to define him. No fields, no disciplines, have awakened an internal voice. Not yet, not ever, he thinks. He is a man without a voice and such a man is most conscious of the primordial emotions of hating those who bar his pleasure and love toward those who facilitate it. Adagio-it was a somewhat forgotten word, which once popped into his head for the creation of an email address. The word has inadvertently been a perfect epitome of his slow mental activity for books. Slow in that respect, academics with their words and numbers in infinity have stood out like the awkward anachronisms of hieroglyphs chiseled into stone. It would seem ironic that someone who perceives books to be as lifeless as stones should be in a library watching the pages of a book occasionally turn under the draft of the ceiling fan when not under the directive of his own will. The book is of 20th century American art and contains a few examples of his mother's work. Only pleasures from pictures have had some vague calling or tugging; but then it has been pictures that have composed so much of his existence.
He had detoured from the interstate and came into the town to buy a sandwich and cola at a convenience store, which fostered the purchase of the newest issues of Playboy and Hustler as well. He is downtown because the heavy diluting of rain in this small town necessitated him to pull over to the side of the road and park his car. He is in the library because it was a two-block run from where he parked his car. The continual pounding of rain caused him to have to go to the bathroom sooner than what he would have done otherwise, for he is in all respects a follower of nature's suggestions. The bathroom was his impetus for entering the library. In the process of staring up at the fan to focus a second of hate toward it he sees a woman straightening her body after rising off the seat. She is at a table around 50 feet from that of his own. Her table is near a small wall of books. He regrets that he has not seen her legs slide on the shiny wood of the chair or her thighs rising up to him although imagined action can be continually repeated and he continually repeats it. Bound in black stockings, the legs go to the front desk where some hands scan titles of her videos.
"It seems nobody checks out books any longer. We've had to restrict the kids use of the internet upstairs. They'll do nothing but chat the whole day if nobody catches them and then before they leave they check out videos to take back home."
"Well, guess I should feel honored to be thought of as a kid when I'm nearly 42. I am really in a hurry so could you please…"
"All right."
For a minute if not longer there is a momentary lapse in the present before he becomes conscious of it again. Fueled on adrenalin and hunger, he finds himself walking behind her in the rain. He imagines himself catching up and offering his umbrella to her but she has one of her own and so he timidly tracks her from a distance. He imagines her dropping the keys to her car but the fates also do not allow him this prop. He sees her get in but imagines her already seated with the door shut but unable to start the car. This does not happen either. He is unable to monitor himself. Like a child he distances himself from his actions. He is feeling the movements of someone else's body. Will has been frozen in time. There is a cold frozen constancy in his consciousness of the present moment. He finds himself knocking on the window. She rolls it down. He does not know what to say. She hasn't dropped one of her videos in the rain. He is as if naked and without a gift or prop with which to make a confidence. He stares at her mature beauty.
"Yes?" she asks.
"Looks like the air in one of your tires is low-this one on the driver's side."
"Oh. That shouldn't be the case. I filled them up yesterday. Do you…" She hesitates. "Do you think I need to come out and look?" Her words are circumspect. They are of one who does not trust his intentions. If only she could have said this with confidence, he thinks. He means that then he could have gotten the opportunity to have her outside. He could have pushed her under the car and accosted her with his body.
"No, maybe you'll get back home okay. I think you will. I just noticed it looked down a little."
She smiles. "Maybe because I am sitting here. Don't you think so? - Or maybe not." Her tone reflects more confidence in him and she treats his ideas with deference. She defers all mechanical judgments to men whom she supposes to have such genetic predispositions.
"It's low," he says, "but I think you'll get back fine. In the morning you can put air in it."
"Thanks so much. Okay." She pushes the button to roll up the window. He wants to stop its progression. He wants to put his hands in what is left of the closing hole and break out the window. He wants to shove himself on top of her, slap her down onto the passenger seat, and have his pleasure. As strong as that urge is, he is too socialized and can't break in. He retreats to his car. He subconsciously pushes in the lever of his umbrella and carries it, compacted, within his hands despite being drenched by rain. He feels the tightening of his sinuses. He is getting ill but he isn't aware of this. He passes a music store. He notices that his shoestring, to the left, is dragging onto the wet pavement like broken strings of a guitar. Passing an alley he envisions her there to be grasped like a guitar's case; yanking the instrument from its case; and letting his tongue strum. He feels incontinent and he notices his erection. He imagines her without ablution, naked to smell, touch, sight, and taste. He gets into his car, ties his shoe, pulls a handkerchief out of the glove compartment, and wipes the sweat and rain from his forehead and face. For a moment he rests his aching forehead against the rim of the steering wheel.