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The Sensitive Man
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
235 The Sensitive Man Cliff Adamson learned his new girlfriend, Heather Lange, was being followed by a man on a Harley two weeks into their relationship. Had she said it was a Harley? Surely it had to have been a Harley, no Goldwing , no Japanese rice-burner would do to describe his horror at her description of the stalker, but he honestly didn’t think she had said it was a Harley, didn’t think, and he hated to admit this prejudice in himself, she’d really know the difference. The Harley, he guessed, had been his invention, his contribution to the story. Heather told him about the motorcycle man after dinner at his house: candles, wine, linguine with creamy Gorgonzola. While Cliff had cleared off the table, insisting she rest, Heather wandered to the front window, a glass of white wine in her hand, and Cliff looked up to see her standing there, her elegant form against the sheer curtain. It stopped him short, seeing her like that, a grace he hadn’t noticed before, and he supposed he fell in love right then. Love seemed a risky The Sensitive Man venture after leaving a twenty-odd year marriage only a month before. He had children, after all, not much younger than Heather. But he decided to put away any feelings of guilt or inappropriateness and go for it. He remembered distinctly thinking those words, go for it, so contrary to what he might normally have said. As Cliff sliced the cheesecake he thought about how suitable it was to alter his language to mirror the alteration of his life. Those changes shouldn’t and couldn’t go unmarked. It was then, as he returned to the living room to ask Heather if she’d like coffee with the cheesecake, though he already knew her well enough to know she would say “only if it’s decaf,” for which he was prepared, he noticed the change in her. He never did ask the question , for as he entered the room, he saw how the graceful form he’d just fallen in love with had stiffened. Whatever had happened to change Heather’s posture had changed the feeling in the room, too. “What’s wrong, Heather?” he asked. She turned to him then, trembling so he took her glass from her. Pale, so he led her straight to a chair. And again, “What is it?” Heather swallowed hard. “I thought maybe he’d gone away,” she said and ran her hand distractedly to her neck, fingers picking lightly at her collarbone. “Who?” Cliff said. “The man on the motorcycle.” At this, Cliff went to the window and looked into the dark street. 236 The Sensitive Man 237 He searched through the gloom for a motorcycle— thinking for a little while it was there, behind a car at the far end of the street. “Just now?” he asked then. “Yes,” she said. And he looked again, craning to look as far as he could both directions, his forehead pressed against the cold window; it was winter, early January. “Well, he seems to be gone now.” “Is he?” Heather said, her tone of voice strange, eager, almost a whisper. “Who is he?” Cliff knelt beside Heather where she sat in the chair. Her face was still pale in the glow of the candles. He had heard criticism of the tendency in men to desire weakness and illness in women; Cliff had heard it a few times from his wife, a healthy, strapping woman, but until tonight he had not seen it in himself. Tonight, though, he had to admit he desired Heather more because of her drawn appearance, and the fear too, how erotic. This wasn’t something Cliff liked knowing about himself, but there it was. All the while he had been gently squeezing Heather’s hand, telling her everything would be all right, though he still did not know exactly what was wrong. Once she settled down and felt well enough in fact to eat a piece of his cheesecake—remarking again, as she had been all evening, what a wonderful cook he was, her comments always contrasted with some selfdeprecatory remark about how she couldn’t cook, how The Sensitive Man she was a downright putz in the kitchen—Heather told him about the man on the motorcycle, how for years he had been following her. She didn’t know the man, had no idea who he was, couldn...