Eustace Chisholm and the Works by James Purdy

Author:James Purdy
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2015-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

IN A SECOND-CLASS hotel on La Salle Street, Amos allowed Reuben any and every liberty and intimacy. Indeed Reuben was surprised at the boy’s sexual inexperience, for though Masterson himself had fewer sexual encounters than he boasted and most of these with the female sex, he suddenly felt deeply initiated and masculine before Amos, and his passion was increased by this fact. It was difficult for him to take in that Daniel and Amos’s life together had been only “sleepwalking.” Amos himself tried to explain, but at last gave up, admitting that he himself did not understand it.

After the first abatement of physical desire, Reuben lay back peacefully against Amos’s body. He talked at such length about Daniel Haws that Amos, nonplussed, gazed at his new friend and said, “You sound more taken with him than you are with me.”

“Daniel wasn’t my type at all,” Reuben pooh-poohed, “too masculine. But he was certainly the deeper of you two.” He spoke hastily, then apologized for this remark when he saw it had stung Amos’s pride. “Oh you’re more of everything, Amos,” he said. “All I meant by ‘deeper’ is that Daniel loved you more than either of us understand, else how explain the sleepwalking, and well, he gave you up to me through love, that’s clear.”

“Oh for Jesus Christ’s sake, let up, Reuben!”

“Tell me where you’ve been all these past weeks,” Reuben asked, bending over his conquest now, moistening the youth’s curls with his mouth. He looked down at Amos’s wreath of pubic hair which at that moment, catching the light, resembled an aureole. Leaning over, he kissed him again and again.

“Reuben, you wouldn’t believe me if I was to tell you,” Amos lay back languid under the cascade of Reuben’s caresses. “Fact is that’s the trouble with my life. When I tell people about it they think I’m lying. My life is odder than any pack of lies a maniac could give out.”

“Supposing then you tell me the unbelievable truth.”

“I went to the district, as Eustace still calls the colored part of town,” Amos began. “See, some months ago, Ace was very keen on the occult and he even got Daniel to go over there with him to Luwana Edwards’s. She’s a spiritualist and fortune-teller. Has her own church now. She was awful taken with Ace, but shied away from Daniel for some reason. She told Ace he had second-sight. I wandered around after Maureen’s party, into Washington Park, and then I thought of Luwana Edwards. After all I had to spend the night somewhere. But she told me too cheerfully she couldn’t admit me even when I explained my situation and she also wanted me to know she didn’t forecast the future any more for anybody . . .”

“And after Luwana’s where did you go?” Reuben asked bitterly.

“After Luwana’s?” Amos laughed. Then turning moody, he continued, “You know Luwana said something funny just before I left her place. She said she was aiming to pass her gift on to a friend.

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