In One Person

sing, she said.
    Thus I was introduced to a vagina, with one restriction; only the ballroom (or not-a-ballroom) part was withheld—and for that part I was content, even happy, to wait. For someone who had long viewed that part with trepidation, I was introduced to a vagina in ways I found most intriguing and appealing. I truly loved having sex with Esmeralda, and I loved
her
, too.
    There were those après-sex moments when, in a half-sleep or forgetting that I was with a woman, I would reach out and touch her vagina—only to suddenly pull back my hand, as if surprised. (I had been reaching for Esmeralda’s penis.)
    “Poor Billy,” Esmeralda would say, misunderstanding my fleeting touch; she was thinking that I wanted to be
inside
her vagina, that I was feeling a pang for all that was denied me.
    “I’m not ‘poor Billy’—I’m
happy
Billy, I’m
fully satisfied
Billy,” I always told her.
    “You’re a very good sport,” Esmeralda would say. She had no idea how happy I was, and when I reached out and touched her vagina—in my sleep, sometimes, or otherwise unconsciously—Esmeralda had no clue what I was reaching for, which was what she didn’t have and what I must have been missing.
    D ER O BERKELLNER
(“ THE HEADWAITER ”) at Zufall was a stern-looking young man who seemed older than he was. He’d lost an eye and wore an eye patch; he was not yet thirty, but either the eye patch or how he’d lost the eye gave him the gravity of a much older man. His name was Karl, and he never talked about losing the eye—the other waiters had told me the story: At the end of World War II, when Karl was ten, he’d seen some Russian soldiers raping his mother and had tried to intervene. One of the Russians had hit the boy with his rifle, and the blow cost Karl his sight in one eye.
    Late that fall of my junior year abroad—it was nearing the end of November—Esmeralda was given her first chance to be the lead soprano on the tripartite stage of the Staatsoper. As she’d predicted, it was an Italian opera—Verdi’s
Macbeth
—and Esmeralda, who’d been patiently waiting her turn (actually, she’d been thinking that her turn would never come), had been the soprano understudy for Lady Macbeth for most of that fall (in fact, for as long as we’d been living together).
    “
Vieni, t’affretta
!” I’d heard Esmeralda sing in her sleep—when Lady Macbeth reads the letter from her husband, telling her about his first meeting with the witches.
    I asked Karl for permission to leave the restaurant’s first seating early, and to get to the après-opera seating late; my girlfriend was going to be Lady Macbeth on Friday night.
    “You have a girlfriend—the understudy really is your girlfriend, correct?” Karl asked me.
    “Yes, that’s correct, Karl,” I told him.
    “I’m glad to hear it, Bill—there’s been talk to the contrary,” Karl said, his one eye transfixing me.
    “Esmeralda is my girlfriend, and she’s singing the part of Lady Macbeth this Friday,” I told the headwaiter.
    “That’s a one-and-only chance, Bill—don’t let her blow it,” Karl said.
    “I just don’t want to miss the beginning—and I want to stay till the end, Karl,” I said.
    “Of course, of course. I know it’s a Friday, but we’re not that busy. The warm weather is gone. Like the leaves, the tourists are dropping off. This might be the last weekend we really
need
an English-speaking waiter, but we can manage without you, Bill,” Karl told me. He had a way of making me feel bad, even when he was on my side. Karl made me think of Lady Macbeth calling on the ministers of hell.
    “
Or tutti sorgete
.” I’d heard Esmeralda sing that in her sleep, too; it was chilling, and of no help to my German.
    “
Fatal mia donna
!” Lady Macbeth says to her weakling husband; she takes the dagger Macbeth has used to kill Duncan and smears the sleeping guards with blood. I couldn’t wait to see Esmeralda pussy-whipping Macbeth! And all this happens in act 1. No wonder I didn’t want to arrive late—I didn’t want to miss a minute of the witches.
    “I’m very proud of you, Bill. I mean, for having a girlfriend—not just that big soprano of a girlfriend, but
any
girlfriend. That should silence the talk,” Karl told me.
    “Who’s talking, Karl?” I asked him.
    “Some of the other waiters, one of the sous-chefs—you know how people talk, Bill.”
    “Oh.”
    In truth, if anyone in the kitchen at Zufall needed proof