Free Night Soul and Other Stories by Joseph McElroy Page A

laugh, brief. “I thought the phone was going to ring,” she said. He was embarrassed. “The accident, you were what, eighteen?” “Sixteen.” “I guess it wasn’t your signature city you got drawn into in those days. But bridge houses on an old El, all that that…” Where did she get her information? he asked. “You knew at sixteen, looking at the ceiling.” He’d known nothing. He’d had an aunt who designed for Bucky Fuller, did the architect work actually but no one would ever know. She got no credit.
    For her ideas? Valerie said.
    The front door swung shut behind him. He had left her. The elevator in this well-appointed apartment house on its way up, a phone went, if it was hers. Her laugh a moment ago had been like someone else. The Chinese. He belonged to the city. What had she meant by bodily functions? He tried to straighten up. No one stepped out of the elevator. He never saw patients coming or going.
    He thought about her when he was with his friends. And when he was thinking. Acupuncture as anesthesia. Patterns of disharmony. Sometimes she began with his tongue. Mossy. That mean green?—he was joking. No, it was the coating, the fur. After-a-rough-night fur? he interjected. Did he have rough nights? she said. He stared at her. No, she said, it was how the coating—he had it out again down over his lower lip—was implanted on the tongue material. His coating was thin, but OK.
    Thank God for that.
    She said it was his back but it was more his kidneys. “Oh is that all?” “A weakness there.” He asked if they were getting anywhere. Beyond pain management did he mean? she came back at him. She questioned him. Any unexplained fevers? Did he work regular hours? He was always working.
    Call that regular hours?
    People called him.
    Who?
    College president, consult on a “green” building. Do you get yourself into things? The college came to mind, he shut his eyes, students, self-defense. Sometimes he worked all night, he said.
    When she got him on the table she stuck his right palm, which he didn’t like. “What is it?” Skin, he said. Yes, she murmured. Lucky he wasn’t on a serious blood-thinner, he said, he touched her. Not at your age, she said, and acupuncture did not cause bleeding, it could be used to stop it.
    He was being touched but along a line that crossed another this time he was sure. “What is it?” he said. “You came in armored,” she said, “you should see yourself.” “I come here to see you.” It was less a needled point he felt now. She had been working two meridians, and we would see. Skin was elastic, he said, containing most of him openly. They thought about it. He found a growing warmth, an erection not only in his face, and welcomed not what was happening to him at this moment but in his shorts its embarrassment. She had paused to appreciate his look. His flush? Skin, he said out loud, remembering work and all this strange travel, always a stretch, and that the Chinese, who had thought up pasta, hadn’t they (?), though not all its shapes—had asked him to consult and they would have to talk about that. He and she.
    But the phone rang—like clockwork. He didn’t feel flushed but she handed him the mirror and left him there, his face looked normal. An unusual second ring joined them, the machine wasn’t behaving.
    Needles heel to arm, trajectories into the Qi marking targets all over his front, he listened to footsteps he knew quite well stop. She would be arrested before the shoji screen, its spiritual grid, the rosewood frame dyed black—and she was looking at the still water in the miniature pool, he could hear her thinking a divided thought under the eye of the caller, and his perspiring face in the mirror made him dizzy. It was a rival. She would be back. She was in the doorway.
    “It was on,” said the man lying there in his underwear, feeling definitely something. “I’m back,” she said, unlike herself, “excuse the interruption.” “There