The Last Gentleman

will?”
    â€œI’ve loved you ever since I saw you in Central—that is, in Jamie’s room.”
    â€œAh.”
    Love, he thought, and all at once the word itself went opaque and curious, a little howling business behind the front teeth. Do I love her? I something her. He felt his nose.
    â€œLet’s go home, either to your home or mine, and be married.”
    â€œMarried,” said Kitty faintly.
    Dander from the old blankets was beginning to bother his nose. “Would you mind taking this off,” he asked her presently and took hold of her quezquemetl. “Aren’t you hot?”
    â€œAre you out of your mind,” she whispered fiercely.
    â€œI’m sorry. I didn’t mean—” He hadn’t meant to undress her but only to get her out of these prickly homespuns and back into decent Alabama cotton.
    Kitty sat up. Her eyes were fixed in a stare upon a bowl of tiny cactus plants. “The Huichol believe that things change forms, that one thing can become another thing. An hour ago it sounded like nonsense.”
    â€œIs that right?” He had heard it before, this mythic voice of hers. One of his aunts lived in Cuernavaca.
    â€œThe hikuli plant is the deer. The deer is the corn. Look at that.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThat color.”
    He looked down at the blanket between them where forked Navaho lightning clove through an old brown sky, brown as old blood.
    â€œWhat about it?”
    â€œDo you see the depths opening into depths?”
    â€œNo.” He tried to blow his nose but the mucous membranes had swelled against each other like violet eiderdowns. “I think I’ll be going.”
    â€œWait,” she called from the doorway as he walked rapidly off into the night, forgetful of summer now, head ducked, shouldering as if he were still bucking the winter gales. He waited.
    â€œAll right,” she said. “Where do you want to go?”
    He gazed vaguely about at the shuttered shops and dark brownstones.
    â€œWe can’t go back there,” she said. Her pale face loomed unsteadily in the darkness. He was thinking about the reciprocal ratio of love: was it ever so with the love of women that they held out until the defeat of one’s first fine fervor, not merely until one feigned defeat but rather until one was in truth defeated, had shrugged and turned away and thought of other matters—and now here they came, all melts and sighs, breathing like a furnace. Her lips were parted slightly and her eyes sparkled. His nose was turning to concrete.
    â€œAnd we can’t go to the Y.” She had taken his arm. He felt importunate little tugs at his elbow as if he were a blind man and she wanted him to cross the street.
    She pulled him close. “Do you notice anything?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThe lampposts.”
    â€œWhat about them?”
    â€œThey seem alive and ominous.”
    He was displeased with her. Was it then the case with love that lovers must alternate, forever out of phase with one another? It did not suit her to be fanciful. Was she drunk? She gave him a kiss tasting of burnt corn. He wished she would chew Juicy Fruit like a proper Alabama girl.
    â€œI do know a place,” he said finally. “But it won’t do at night.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œIt’s in the park.”
    â€œWait,” she said and flew back to the cottage. He waited, listing at a ten-degree angle. Had he, empathic as ever, got dizzy from her dizziness?
    When she returned, she wore a skirt and blouse instead of pants and quezquemetl. “Take this.” She pressed something into his hand.
    â€œWhat’s this for?” It was a small revolver, a police special, with hardly a quarter inch of barrel.
    â€œFor the park. My brother gave it to me as a going-away present when I came to New York.”
    â€œSutter?”
    â€œYes. He’s a police surgeon.”
    He stuck the pistol into his coat pocket and allowed himself to be nudged toward the subway.
    They walked from the Broadway subway exit to the park. Fifty blocks north there were more fires in Harlem and the sense of faraway soundless tumult. Police sirens kicked out, subsided toa growl.
    He hesitated. “I don’t know.”
    Again the nudge at his elbow. “Don’t worry. They’re all up there.”
    He shrugged and took her into the Ramble, a densely wooded stretch. Holding her behind him, he walked swiftly