Nude Men

conceivable that if I were the one with a fatal disease, I might use the elephant to try to save my life, though this is by no means certain. As for Sara, I had not, up to now, thought of using the white elephant on her. I suppose that subconsciously it was a mixture of thinking it would be too trivial and not wanting to tamper with this big outside event that did not involve me directly. If destiny wants her to die, then she should die. In addition, if I were to wish for Sara to live and she were then indeed to live somehow, I could never be certain that she was not a living dead of some sort, living against nature.
    But the more I think about it, the more I feel I should use the elephant on her: It seems I would be selfish and evil not to. So I take the elephant out of its gray felt pouch and make a wish that Sara will live. When I replace the elephant in its pouch, my conscience is cleared. I did my duty.
     
    P erhaps Sara doesn’t wash anymore. Her face is dark, or dusty, or something. It looks as though she has a five o’clock shadow.
    Amazing how much that’s what it looks like. A five o’clock shadow. I ask her to come closer to me. She acts delighted, probably thinking I am going to kiss her. I scrutinize her face, and I see that it’s hair on her face, like the beginnings of a beard. It’s very fine hair, like peach fuzz, but slightly too much to be called peach fuzz.
    A very cold thing runs through me, as though the devil is talking to me, making me aware that he is responsible for this. I am reminded again of The Exorcist. I feel that something cruel is going on. I cannot stay in the same room with her anymore. I must leave. And then the five o’clock shadow will end. If I don’t see it, it won’t exist, I hope. I won’t mention it to Lady Henrietta or Sara. If they don’t notice, well, then, it doesn’t exist.
     
    * * *
     
    T he next time I see Sara, she looks fine. There’s no five o’clock shadow. I am delighted. I had imagined it.
    But when I get closer, I see that it’s worse than a five o’clock shadow. It is shaved.
    So, Henrietta and Sara did, finally, notice the shadow and decided to shave it off, and they think I never noticed it, and they are not about to tell me about it. I didn’t think they would hide something like this from me.
    I confront Henrietta when Sara is not there:
    “I’m not blind. And I am a man. I can see that she’s shaving. Were you just not going to tell me?”
    “She didn’t want you to know.”
    “What’s going on?”
    “The doctor said it’s an unexpected symptom, that her tumor is now touching a part of her brain that causes it to produce male hormones. But the hormones are only being activated in certain ways: in the ways that grow beards, not the ways that make voices deeper and muscles bigger. Only facial hair.”
     
    I have dinner with Laura at Défense d’y Voir. As we are eating, people at the neighboring tables suddenly start to clap at her. She looks at me, amused. She seems used to it.
    I lean forward and whisper to her over our desserts. “Why are they clapping?”
    “Because I just put sugar in my coffee.”
    “Why would they clap at that?”
    “Because the sugar disappeared into the coffee.”
    “You must be joking.”
    “Not in the least.”
     
    * * *
     
    S ara asks me to let my beard grow.
     
    S ara asks me to go buy pet fishes with her. We go. She buys nine tropical fishes. She also buys a fish tank, which I find out later is for the sole purpose of not arousing my suspicion, which she should not have bothered with, because I don’t care if she wants to kill her fishes.
    She looks like a grieving man, a man in mourning, who hasn’t shaved in a few days. She has long stubble, which is darker than the blond, fairy princess hair on her head. In the pet store she wears a scarf over her mouth, like a gangster, like someone with the flu, to hide the sight. As we leave the store, she turns around, faces the customers, and lowers her scarf, smiling, her small red Ups peeking through the dark hairs. I look at the people, panic-stricken. Many of them are staring at Sara, some squinting to see better, others looking plainly devastated.
    She does the killing by size, starting with the smallest fish. The neon tetra goes in boiling water, the guppy goes in the freezer (“because he’s so pretty that I want to preserve him”), the painted glass fish is vacuumed off the carpet. (Before moving on to the next execution, she shouts