The_New_Yorker_-_November_11__2019_UserUpload.Net

66 THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER11, 2019

to them, rose about three feet off the
floor and floated backward into the
building. I watched them for a mo-
ment. They were talking and vaping as
before. They had failed to notice—I
say this in all objectivity—one of the
most wondrous occurrences in the his-
tory of humankind.

W

hen I got home, Pam was sit-
ting at the table. She had not
removed her coat. Viki was on the sofa
with Molly, fixing her up with head-
phones and an iPad. That wasn’t nor-
mally permitted on weekdays. Some-
thing was up.
I decided to make green tea.
I overheard Pam telling Viki that
Becky had physically attacked her; that
it wasn’t the first time this had hap-
pened; that on this occasion Pam had
felt in mortal danger. “I’m scared she’s
going to come by here,” she said.
“This is terrible,” Viki said. She was
wringing her hands, which wasn’t like
her. But the situation was unusually
vexing. Her primary allegiance was to
Becky, not to Pam. Viki had known
Pam only since the moment, about five
years before, when she had surfaced as
Becky’s first girlfriend. Viki’s friend-
ship with Becky went back to their
undergrad days at Boston College,
where they belonged to a Thomas
Aquinas study group whose members
had stayed in touch, more or less, ever
since—“the old theology gang,” Viki
called them.
The first time I met Viki, I asked
her what theology was, exactly. She an-
swered that it was the study of the na-
ture of the divine. She must have known
that this was a very, very hot thing to
say, particularly to someone like me, an
atheist and a desperado. When I asked
if she believed in God, she murmured,
also hotly, “Would that I did.” For years
the subject didn’t come up again. Then,
one night, when I was beset by anguish
at my deformation, I confided to Viki
in the darkness of our bedroom that I
felt overwhelmingly confused. “I just
don’t understand it,” I said.
There was a pause. From out of the
dark her voice said, “The ultimate end
of man is to understand God, in some
fashion.”
“I’m sorry?”
The Viki voice whispered, “All things

exist in order to attain the divine likeness.”

A third voice sounded: Molly had

woken up with a shout of fear. We

heard the rapidly thumping approach

of a panicked little sprinter. The door

crashed open, and then she was in bed

with us, and then she was asleep in the

space between her mother and father.

Pam wasn’t part of the old theology

gang. Pam was out of Peru, New York.

When Becky had begun furtively dat-

ing her, she had referred to her as the

Peruvian. Becky had always been

straight, and Viki and I thought the

Peruvian was a dude from the Andes.

It was quite the thunderbolt when we

were introduced to a woman, somewhat

older and beefier than any of us, who

worked as a purchasing manager in

Long Island City. We liked Pam right

away. She was warm and lively and had

all these stories about hunting ghosts

on Valcour Island and making out with

Vermont girls on the banks of the Aus-

able River. In all honesty, we soon pre-

ferred her company to Becky’s, not that

anyone was making comparisons.

And yet, even if Pam was more fun,

she was more detachable. It would have

been easier for Viki if it had been Pam,

not Becky, who was the one doing the

beating up.

I served Viki and Pam the green tea.

I don’t know why, but it bothered me

that Pam hadn’t removed her coat. It

added to the disturbance.

Pam related that she’d started a

breakup discussion—not for the first

time—and Becky had flown into a rage.

She started throwing things, including

a glass paperweight that if it had hit Pam

on the head would have brained her.

I had been in Pam and Becky’s apart-

ment many times. It was full of tchotch-

kes. If you wanted to throw things,

there was no shortage of ammunition.

“Oh, my God,” Viki said.

“She went to look for my gun,” Pam

said. “She knows I keep it in one of the

shoeboxes. She had this look on her

face. She wanted to stop me from leav-

ing. I ran out before she could get me.”

“Oh, my God,” Viki said.

Pam showed us her phone. There

were twenty-seven missed calls from

Becky.

I was in the kitchen, throwing to-

gether some dinner. “You can get a re-

straining order,” I said. “There are things

that can be done.”

AUBADE

All night, my psyche comforts itself

with you. It delights in watching your body

travel through landscapes so lush even the bidet

is painted with twisting gouache flowers.

They frame a lady who rides an elephant,

while a gentleman stands holding up a lotus

toward her saddle. Then we are in a city, climbing

up a brownstone into the home of people you love.

I step behind you, smiling quietly into our bodies’

clement warmth. Except, instead of the usual deflecting

skirt, in my dream I’ve dressed you in mildly tailored

pants. Next, we are in a building, in a bazaar, in

a city inhabited by people subtle and endless

shades of a dark cinnamon. We walk through

room after room, then stop when we come

across two leather chairs with frames