Nude Men

She returns the pendant.
    One evening, among the presents, we find a diamond ring with a note that says, “Marry me,” signed by a certain Paul Tops. The following night she asks the audience, “Is Paul Tops here?” A man’s hand shoots up. She goes to him, returns the ring in its box, and says, “No. I’m sorry, I love him .” And she points to me, sitting in my dark corner, with my legs propped up on the other chair, a Shirley Temple in my hand and a dish of green Jell-O jiggle on my table, and everyone looks at me, and I am caught off guard, and I try to straighten up a little and look less as if I’m in bed, but it’s hard because of those feet of mine propped up on that chair. I smile at the people, and they clap at me. When their attention goes back to Laura, I sink back in my dark corner and sigh with relief.
    Another frill she adds to her show is to answer people’s thoughts. She asks everyone to think of a question that is important to them. She then comes down in the audience and plays fortune cookie. She stands in front of someone and says, “It all depends on if you’re healthy,” or “You would have to be more intelligent,” or “Don’t be in such a hurry,” or “Sometimes in life you can’t do that,” or “Okay, but first go to the hairdresser.” Although people do not seem displeased with her answers, one day I ask her to answer one of my silent questions, to see how good she really is. She accepts. I think: Will Henrietta ever love me?
    Not that I want her to. Just asking out of curiosity, out of lack of imagination, out of my inability to think of a more interesting question. “Not as long as I live,” Laura answers.
    Hmm. Interesting response. But it doesn’t prove her authenticity one iota.
    In her frilliest gimmick, Laura comes down to the audience and touches faces. She’ll stand in front of people, her face very close to theirs, squinting, scrutinizing their features while breathing softly on their nose, and finally, with the tip of her index finger, she’ll touch a particular spot on their face. It is the most aesthetically pleasing spot to touch on that particular person, on that particular day, at that particular moment.
    Perhaps she was inspired by our game of secretly touching.
    She’ll touch a spot on a chin, on a jaw, in the hollow of a cheek, above an eyebrow, on the tad of an eye, on the horizon of a mouth, on the sorrow of a nose, on the joke of an eyelash, on the imagination of a mustache, on the laziness of a beard. I get carried away. The men find it very exciting, I’m certain, when she breathes on their eyes and squints into their pores. One evening she does it to me in front of all those people, who are holding their breaths at the romance of it, and my heart melts with love, and so does my stomach, and I become aroused and feel as though I’m wilting. I wait with anticipation while she makes up her mind as to where she’ll touch me. I hope it won’t be somewhere funny, like the tip of my nose. I don’t want this to be comical.
    She touches my right temple. My throat constricts. I’m slightly disappointed. I was hoping she might do something different, something special, to me, like kiss me, but she obviously wants to be professional, wants to show no favoritism, no lack of discipline, no flagging, meandering, or pussyfooting. She takes her touching seriously.
     
    * * *
     
    O ne day, in the subway, a man is doing magic tricks. We watch him pull a rabbit out of a hat, and Laura laughs.
    “Why are you laughing?” I ask.
    “I’m thinking of what my audience would think of that. They would find that so vulgar, so base.”
     
    L aura has eliminated the dancing from her show, as you might have noticed by now. (“The more cultured the person, the more stark they like it,” she explains to me.)
     
    A rticles come out on her magic.
    There are imitators, but they are not accepted by the most cultured people. She is considered the best, because the first.
     
    T wo ballet companies have been fighting to get her.
    “But it’s not ballet,” I tell her. “You don’t even dance anymore.”
    “That’s the whole point. Just as it’s not magic.” Nevertheless, people still call her “The Dancing Magician.”
     
    L aura has raised magic to equal the most important art forms.
     
    H ow big are her powers? Can she make people love her? Are we under her spell?
     
    * * *
     
    I often catch myself not wondering if I can have a happy life with a