I Can’t Stop Loving You
Basil slept in complete isolation, childishly naive about what transpired in sleep, of how wicked the dreams grew.
The man lay on his back. He held his arms tightly crossed at the chest, legs straight, head thrown back so that the cavernous nostrils flared, the brown neck flexed and the distended cords showed passionately. At the open mouth a rivulet of saliva streaked one corner of the heavy lips.
And halfway down the full length of this long and well made colored man, a body that did not show its fifty years, but had yet the suppleness of youth, rose the fist shaped contour of his erect member -- erect only in sleep, always in sleep, raised up under the sheets like the Holy Ghost hiding in their bed.
The old white man tiptoeing by the open door did not pause to look in. For him the scene made a painting, one that had hung there for years, so long that if it had been removed the bare wall behind would have been pale from lack of exposure.
Instead, he passed without a glance, his Donald Duck jelly jar glass ringing in hand with the slippery notes of ice cubes.
In the looking glass over the bathroom sink Homer observed that he hadn’t changed overnight. This gave him a moment of gloom. His mane of white hair straggled as before to below his shoulders. Rotund face, puffy and chalk white, no wrinkles. He wandered the Loisaidas, as his Spanish boys called it, with a large baby look. Green eyes searching for a curiosity. Green eyes that still drew glances even at his age.
After his stroke, Basil took the privilege of sleeping till noon -- Homer that of living so much longer without his vacant eyes and mumbled love. Now, the impotence was of importance to him only once a week.
Too hemmed in for light, the first floor of his house glimmered in its dullness. This morning the windows were large rectangles of winter -- Dutch Renaissance depression streaked with nasty rain that while he watched turned to sleet.
From the refrigerator Homer could have turned and admired the tuffs of withered trees in the park by the church, wintry limbs framing a country spire. Two hundred year old church and hoary trees, the glory of Man in the drizzle beyond the black bars of the windows. It was a Vermeer at the corner. Serenity lingering from the Dutch golden age.
If he should care to, he could tiptoe over to another window and by squeezing his heavy and placid face into one special corner, eye almost half of the front of the Second Avenue Laundry, which sat across the avenue from the church. Too far away to be more than a blur. He wondered how a laundress that near could remain so enigmatic. She ought to be clear, like in Edward Hopper clear—nighttime café window pane clarity.
Homer poured another double jigger of gin, booze sloshing up to Donald’s beak. He preferred measuring his breakfast drinks carefully to peering about at too--familiar scenes.
He admired his old town house because of the size and proportion of its rooms. Everything in his life came in proportion, from movies to cities, from rooms to cocks -- good taste, proportion. These attributes he valued.
He had also bought the house because of the fine old street it opened onto. Renfrew Triangle expressed a superior sense of proportion, with its row of early 19th century to
