She got me drunk.
I remember the first drink, and getting into bed, and her slipping in beside me with the bottle in her hand.
And that was all until this afternoon when I got up with a hangover.
She was still asleep, face to the wall, her pillow bunched up under her neck.
On the night table beside the ash tray overflowing with crushed butts stood the empty bottle, but the last thing I remembered before the curtain came down was watching myself take the second drink.
She stretched and rolled toward me—nude.
I moved back and fell out of bed. I grabbed a blanket to wrap around myself.
"Hi," she yawned.
"You know what I want to do one of these days?"
"What?"
"Paint you in the nude.
Like Michelangelo's 'David.'
You'd be beautiful.
You okay?"
I nodded. "Except for a headache.
Did I—uh—drink too much last night?"
She laughed and propped herself up on one elbow.
"You were loaded.
And boy did you act queer—I don't mean fairyish or anything like that but strange." "What"—I said, struggling to work the blanket around so that I could walk—"is that supposed to mean? What did I do?" "I've seen guys get happy, or sad, or sleepy, or sexy, but I never saw anyone act the way you did. It's a good thing you don't drink often. Oh, my God, I only wish I had a camera. What a short subject you'd have made."
"Well, for Christ's sake, what'd I do?"
"Not what I expected.
No sex, or anything like that.
But you were phenomenal.
What an act!
The weirdest.
You'd be great on the stage. You'd wow them at the Palace.
You went all confused and silly.
You know, as if a grown man starts acting like a kid.
Talking about how you wanted to go to school and learn to read and write so you could be smart like everyone else. Crazy stuff like that.
You were a different person—like they do with method-acting—and you kept saying you couldn't play with me because your mother would take away your peanuts and put you in a cage."
"Peanuts?"
"Yeah!
So help me!" she laughed, scratching her head.
"And you kept saying I couldn't have your peanuts.
The weirdest.
But I tell you, the way you talked!
Like those dimwits on street corners, who work themselves up by just looking at a girl.
A different guy completely. At first I thought you were just kidding around, but now I think you're compulsive or something. All this neatness and worrying about everything."
It didn't upset me, although I would have expected it to.
Somehow, getting drunk had momentarily broken down the conscious barriers that kept the old Charlie Gordon hidden deep in my mind.
As I suspected all along, he was not really gone.
Nothing in our minds is ever really gone.
The operation had covered him over with a veneer of education and culture, but emotionally he was there— watching and waiting.
"What was he waiting for? "You okay now?" I told her I was fine.
She grabbed the blanket I was wrapped in, and pulled me back into bed.
Before I could stop her she slipped her arms around me and kissed me.
"I was scared last night, Charlie. I thought you flipped.
I've heard about guys who are impotent, how it suddenly gets them and they become maniacs."
"How come you stayed?" She shrugged.
"Well, you were like a scared little kid.