Tomasina had lived in the same apartment for eleven years. But when I got there that night it looked completely different. The familiar speckled pink carpeting, like a runner of olive loaf, led up from the lobby, past the same dying plant on the landing, to the yellow door that used to open to my key. The same mezuzah, forgotten by the previous tenants, was still tacked over the threshold. According to the brass marker, 2-A, this was still the same high-priced one-bedroom I’d spent ninety-eight consecutive nights in almost ten years ago. But when I knocked and then pushed open the door I didn’t recognize it. The only light came from candles scattered around the living room. While my eyes adjusted, I groped my way along the wall to the closet—it was right where it used to be—and hung up my coat. There was a candle burning on a nearby chest, and, taking a closer look, I began to get some idea of the direction Tomasina and Diane had gone with the party decorations. Though inhumanly large, the candle was nevertheless an exact replica of the male member in proud erection, the detailing almost hyperrealistic, right down to the tributaries of veins and the sandbar of the scrotum. The phallus’s fiery tip illuminated two other objects on the table: a clay facsimile of an ancient Canaanite fertility goddess of the type sold at feminist bookstores and New Age emporiums, her womb domed, her breasts bursting; and a package of Love incense, bearing the silhouette of an entwined couple.
I stood there as my pupils dilated. Slowly the room bodied forth. There were a lot of people, maybe as many as seventy-five. It looked like a Halloween party. Women who all year secretly wanted to dress sexy had dressed sexy. They wore low-cut bunny tops or witchy gowns with slits up the sides. Quite a few were stroking the candles provocatively or fooling around with the hot wax. But they weren’t young. Nobody was young. The men looked the way men have generally looked for the past twenty years: under threat yet agreeable. They looked like me.
Champagne bottles were going off, just like on the invitation. After every pop a woman shouted, “Ooops, I’m pregnant!” and everyone laughed. Then I did recognize something: the music. It was Jackson Browne. One of the things I used to find endearing about Tomasina was her antiquated and sentimental record collection. She still had it. I could remember dancing to this very album with her. Late one night, we just took off our clothes and started dancing all alone. It was one of those spontaneous living-room dances you have at the beginning of a relationship. On a hemp rug we twirled each other around, naked and graceless in secret, and it never happened again. I stood there, remembering, until someone came up from behind.
“Hey, Wally.”
I squinted. It was Diane.
“Just tell me,” I said, “that we don’t have to watch.”
“Relax. It’s totally PG. Tomasina’s going to do it later. After everybody’s gone.”
“I can’t stay long,” I said, looking around the room.
“You should see the baster we got. Four ninety-five, on sale at Macy’s basement.”
“I’m meeting someone later for a drink.”
“We got the donor cup there, too. We couldn’t find anything with a lid. So we ended up getting this plastic toddler’s cup. Roland already filled it up.”
Something was in my throat. I swallowed.
“Roland?”
“He came early. We gave him a choice between a Hustler and a Penthouse.”
“I’ll be careful what I drink from the refrigerator.”
“It isn’t in the refrigerator. It’s under the sink, in the bathroom. I was worried somebody would drink it.”
“Don’t you have to freeze it?”
“We’re using it in an hour. It keeps.”
I nodded, for some reason. I was beginning to be able to see clearly now. I could see all the family photographs on the mantel. Tomasina and her dad. Tomasina and her mom. The whole Genovese clan up in an oak tree. And then I said, “Call me old-fashioned but…” and trailed off.
“Relax, Wally. Have some champagne. It’s a party.”
The bar had a bartender. I waved off the champagne and asked for a glass of scotch, straight. While I waited, I scanned the room for Tomasina. Out loud, though pretty quietly, I said, with bracing sarcasm, “Roland.” That was just the kind of name it would have to be. Someone out of a medieval epic. “The Sperm of Roland.” I was getting whatever enjoyment I could out of this when suddenly I heard a deep voice somewhere above me say, “Were you talking to me?” I looked up, not into the sun, exactly, but into its anthropomorphic representation. He was both blond and orange, and large, and the candle behind him on the bookshelf lit up his mane like a halo.
“Have we met? I’m Roland DeMarchelier.”
“I’m Wally Mars,” I said. “I thought that might be you. Diane pointed you out to me.”
“Everybody’s pointing me out. I feel like some kind of prize hog,” he said, smiling. “My wife just informed me that we’re leaving. I managed to negotiate for one more drink.”
“You’re married?”
“Seven years.”
“And she doesn’t mind?”
“Well, she didn’t. Right now I’m not so sure.”
What can I say about his face? It was open. It was a face used to being looked at, looked into, without flinching. His skin was a healthy apricot color. His eyebrows, also apricot, were shaggy like an old poet’s. They saved his face from being too boyish. It was this face Tomasina had looked at. She’d looked at it and said, “You’re hired.”
“My wife and I have two kids. We had trouble getting pregnant the first time, though. So we know how it can be. The anxiety and the timing and everything.”
“Your wife must be a very open-minded woman,” I said. Roland narrowed his eyes, making a sincerity check—he wasn’t stupid, obviously (Tomasina had probably unearthed his SAT scores). Then he gave me the benefit of the doubt. “She says she’s flattered. I know I am.”
“I used to go out with Tomasina,” I said. “We used to live together.”
“Really?”
“We’re just friends now.”
“It’s good when that happens.”
“She wasn’t thinking about babies back when we went out,” I said.
“That’s how it goes. You think you have all the time in the world. Then boom. You find you don’t.”
“Things might have been different,” I said. Roland looked at me again, not sure how to take my comment, and then gazed across the room. He smiled at someone and held up his drink. Then he was back to me. “That didn’t work. My wife wants to go.” He set down his glass and turned to leave. “Nice to meet you, Wally.”
“Keep on plugging,” I said, but he didn’t hear me, or pretended not to.
I’d already finished my drink, so I got a refill. Then I went in search of Tomasina. I shouldered my way across the room and squeezed down the hall. I stood up straight, showing off my suit. A few women looked at me, then away. Tomasina’s bedroom door was closed, but I still felt entitled to open it.
She was standing by the window, smoking and looking out. She didn’t hear me come in, and I didn’t say anything. I just stood there, looking at her. What kind of dress should a girl wear to her Insemination Party? Answer: The one Tomasina had on. This wasn’t skimpy, technically. It began at her neck and ended at her ankles. Between those two points, however, an assortment of peepholes had been ingeniously razored into the fabric, revealing a patch of thigh here, a glazed hip bone there; up above, the white sideswell of a breast. It made you think of secret orifices and dark canals. I counted the shining patches of skin. I had two hearts, one up, one down, both pumping.
And then I said, “I just saw Secretariat.”
She swung around. She smiled, though not quite convincingly. “Isn’t he gorgeous?”
“I still think you should have gone with Isaac Asimov.” She came over and we kissed cheeks. I kissed hers, anyway. Tomasina kissed mostly air. She kissed my semen aura.
“Diane says I should forget the baster and just sleep with him.”
“He’s married.”
“They all are.” She paused. “You know what I mean.”
I made no sign that I did. “What are you doing in here?”
She took two rapid-fire puffs on her cigarette, as though to fortify herself. Then she answered, “Freaking out.”
“What’s the matter?”