Contrary Pleasure Read Online Free

at all,
they seemed to think of it as a sort of inexhaustible General Motors, Junior
Grade. They did not know how truly precarious was the Delevan security and way
of life, so delicately balanced on the keen edge of his daily decisions.
    He drank half his drink and undressed and carried the rest of it into the
bathroom. It was curious how impossible it was to tell them the true state of
affairs. Ben is worrying again. You know how he worries. They thought that
because it had always been there, making money in greater or lesser amounts for
the family, it always would be there. And if it slipped fatally and he lost it,
and it fell and smashed, they would all stare at him in fear and accusation and
say, “Why didn’t you tell us how bad things were?”
    He stepped, dripping, out of the shower and finished his drink, sucking
the sliver of ice that remained until it dissolved on his tongue. His mood was
brightening a bit. A drink and a shower could always do it. If Robbie wanted to
stay around, maybe George Furmon could be talked into
taking him on. George, of all of them, was the only one who understood about
the plant. On the other hand, George, for all his expansiveness and his expensive
personal habits, was not known to throw money away.
    Half-turning as he reached for his towel, Ben caught an entirely
unanticipated glimpse of himself in the full-length mirror set into the inside
of the bathroom door. It was not pleasant. His was indeed an unlovely
nakedness, male frame softened by the years and the offices and the luncheons,
until the belly was suety and the thighs raddled and
the haired breasts matronly and the buttocks flaccid, with only the shoulders
remembering the look of drive and power. He looked at himself with disgust. You
felt like a man, and then you saw something that should go in a waddling run
across a vaudeville stage being beaten around the ears with a bladder.
    Where did it all go? The good years and the taut muscles. “Ben, you
mustn’t run up and down the stairs that way!” And all the times of walking in
the night and singing aloud. All the quickenings , now
buried in grossness, in the staleness of the body. He turned away from himself.
Now you can stop looking. It is left there in the mirror. Now you deceive. You
hide it all behind tailoring and fabrics. So far from the body. Today the
bright fabrics are our new skin. A new sort of animal that walks the world,
wide and stately and full of ponderous dignity.
    He rubbed the back of his hand along his jaw and decided not to shave
until morning. He put on baggy gray slacks he loved, and a clean plaid shirt in
lightweight wool. He went to the window and looked out toward the terrace.
George and Alice and their Sandy had left, and so had his own two kids, Brock
and Ellen. His half-brother, Quinn, still sat there, relaxed and slim and brown
and handsome, holding a highball glass moodily in both hands, elbows braced on
the chair arms, while Wilma talked with Bess. Ben refilled his glass in the
kitchen. Two more cubes and a generous amount of bourbon. He went out. The sun
was gone. It was dark under the trees. Birds made settling-down sounds in the
elms. He sighed as he sat down.
    “Tired, dear?” Wilma asked. Stimulus and response. He would sigh and she
would say that, precisely that. Last time. Next time. Marriage seemed to be
largely a Pavlov experiment on a more intricate scale.
    “Little bit,” he said, giving the equally meaningless response.
    “Feel guilty,” Quinn said, “getting out for a round of golf on a day like
this. Had to do it though.” He yawned hugely, mouth cavernous behind the
carefully unkempt mustache, that British colonial mustache which went with his
terse, rather abrupt manner of speech.
    Yes, Ben thought, you had to do it all right. Who was it this time? The
second cousin of the brother-in-law of the county tax assessor? Your reasoning
gets more remote every year. “How did it go?” Ben asked.
    “I had something going on