82 Desire

chores, who loved him deeply and wanted more than anything else to take care of him. His mother. He moved back home for a while, which gave his father power over him. Or at least he saw it that way. Russell could hear him now: “As long as you’re my son, living under my roof, you’ll abide by my rules. When you’re well, you’ll start acting like a man and get a real job.”
    One minute you were king of the world, biceps bulging like some latter-day Stanley Kowalski’s, and the next you were a little kid, once more dependent on your mother, subject to the whims and temper tantrums of your father. Russell felt the starch go out of him. He felt vulnerable and weak. And not a little desperate.
    He read history, which made him feel small and antsy, instilled in him a yearning to be part of something bigger. He read Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, which made him feel he was. For some reason, he read Two Years Before the Mast , and then all the books of Patrick O’Brian. He was desperate, suddenly, to see the world. And he realized with some excitement that he could as easily become a merchant seaman as go back to the oil patch.
    He began to plan, to look forward to his recovery.
    And then one day his father came home and said, “I pulled a few strings and managed to get you a job at United Oil.”
    Russell had spoken arrogantly: “Too bad I won’t be around to take it.”
    “What do you mean by that?”
    “I’ve got plans, Dad. And they don’t include rotting in New Orleans.”
    “And what might they include?”
    “Lying on the beach in Bali. Playing baccarat at Monte Carlo. Checking out the pyramids.”
    “Right. They’re expecting you next week.”
    “Dad, I’m serious. I’m going to sign on as a merchant seaman.”
    His father laughed, leaving him unprepared for what happened next.
    “Do you ever plan to grow up?”
    “Not if I can help it.”
    His father had stood and struck him. “Well, goddamn it, act like a man! Are you trying to break your mother’s heart?”
    Russell felt as if a dark parachute had floated from heaven and closed over his head, the silk getting into his nostrils, cutting off his air, wrapping round his throat. And yet, instead of falling unconscious, or dying, even—or taking the damn thing off—he had simply learned to live half-strangled, encased in darkness.
    He had taken the job at United. He had gone to work with a lot of dumb-ass Tulane grads who were barely over playing drinking games on Saturday night—exactly the kind of person he’d once aspired to be. But now that he was someone different, thanks to his dad, he didn’t fit into the world the same man had thrust him into. A more philosophical person might simply have seen it as one of life’s ironies, but Russell, having the relationship he did with his father, wasn’t able to bring to it a philosophical approach. He was miserable in his job and hated his father for it.
    It was Edward Favret who saved his life.
    He’d known Edward all his life, but by the time he got to United Oil, he had no interest in the man. Edward was too solidly New Orleanian, too routine, too ordinary. But Edward did have a sailboat. Sailing with Edward on weekends was what kept Russell going. He found he loved the water as much as he thought he would and considered Edward’s friendship, such as it was, entirely secondary to the sailing, which fast became his obsession. And Edward, when all was said and done, was so damn pushy about being Russell’s friend, there wasn’t much to be done about it. Russell had few fascinating friends of the sort he felt he deserved.
    Exactly who they would be wasn’t clear to him, anyway. Dukes and counts, maybe? That wasn’t it. He had liked the roughnecks he worked with, but it wasn’t really their company he craved. He liked Yankees, actually. Particularly Jews.
    But Edward Favret was who happened to be around, and he introduced Russell, in short order, to Douglas Seaberry, who had gone to Yale. Douglas, for reasons Russell couldn’t quite put his finger on, was more his type.
    He was more Eastern; a little more confident. Edward had always struck Russell as slightly obsequious—someone you couldn’t completely trust. He was so damn nice you couldn’t possibly know what he was thinking.
    And how very precisely subsequent events had borne this out. Edward had as manipulative a mind as anyone Russell had ever met—though he had surprised himself in this area, displaying quite a bit of talent of