Lancelot

in his hand and was making wary circling movements, feinting and parrying like a scrappy movie star being put to the blood test by Apaches.
    â€œAh now,” I said with relief, advancing on him, rejoicing in the turn events were taking. “Ah.” A fight! A fight is a simple event. Getting hurt in a fight is not bad. I was backing him toward the cul-de-sac between the armoire and the corner. When he felt the wall behind him, he made a quick California move, whirled, cut my shoulder with the knife, and kicked me in the throat. I couldn’t breathe but it didn’t matter much because we were breathing methane anyway. After he whirled he must have also thrown the knife, for the flat of the blade hit my chest and the handle came to hand as neatly as if it were a trick we planned. Again I was embracing his back. This time I was more aware of his nakedness and his vulnerability. Here he was in my arms, a mother’s boy, not really athletic despite his kung-fu skill, but somewhat pigeon-breasted and not used to being naked and smelling of underarm and Ban. So he might have appeared, an Italian boy, a Jewish boy, naked and vulnerable at the army induction center in the Bronx. He was not used to being naked. Did it ever occur to you that we spent a lot of time naked, naked in the locker room, naked in the river swimming, naked taking sunbaths on the widow’s walk? Naked, he was more naked than we ever were.
    We were on the floor. My thighs clasped his in a scissors grip.
    â€œFor Christ’s sake, what are you doing?”
    â€œNothing much.”
    â€œThat’s something I’d like to talk about,” he said panting hard yet speaking quickly and sincerely.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThe absurdity of life. I’ve sensed you were into that.”
    â€œAh.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYes,” I said marveling over his actor’s gift of getting onto the way people talk. For I could recognize my voice in his, the flat giddy musing tone. He had observed me after all. Were we both drunk on methane or was it the case that in fact there were no “great moments” in life? Or both?
    â€œLet’s talk. There’s one thing I always wanted to ask you.”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œIt has to do with something I’ve always desperately wanted in my life. I think you want it too.”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œI want—”
    We’ll never know what he wanted because his head was bending back and I was cutting his throat, I think. No, I’m sure. What I remember better than the cutting was the sense I had of casting about for an appropriate feeling to match the deed. Weren’t we raised to believe that “great deeds” were performed with great feelings—anger, joy, revenge, and so on? I remember casting about for the feeling and not finding one. Yet I am sure the deed was committed, because his voice changed. His voice dropped a foot from his mouth to his windpipe and came out in a rush, not a word, against my hand holding the knife. He was still under me and there was no feel of the heat of blood on my hand, only the rush and bubble of air as the knife went through the cartilage. I held him for a while until the warm air stopped blowing the hairs on the back of my hand. Yes, I feel certain that is what happened.
    Standing by the bed, I gazed down at Margot. I do not remember the storm. She was not dead, not even unconscious. She was watching me, I think. The kerosene light made her cheekbones look wide, an Indian’s cheekbones. Her eyes were pools of darkness. They were open, I think. How could I be sure? I sat on the bed and with my arm across her put her cheek to my face. She was breathing. When she blinked, her eyelashes stirred the air against my cheek. In the midst of the hurricane I felt this minuscule wind her eyelashes made against my cheek. She said something. I felt her diaphragm move under my arm.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œWhat are we going to do?” She spoke in my ear. “Is he—?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œOh no,” she said in simple dismay as if Suellen had dropped her best Sèvres vase.
    Margot, unlike me, had a feeling but not a remarkable one. It was dismay that things had gotten out of hand. Perhaps the house had begun to break up under the force of the wind. We had better do something about it.
    â€œWhat are we going to do?”
    â€œWe?”
    â€œYou.”
    â€œI don’t