596
SUSAN SONTAG
stretches out on his back, convulsed with laughter.
"Cut it out, Eddy!" Jekyll, leaning forward on the couch, is embarrassed.
"You know it's not that. It's because ... I've realized I don't have enough
... enough imagination. You know what I mean?"
Hyde waves his spindly legs in the air, while pushing both hands into his
ribs to stop laughing. "And you think if you hang around with me"---choking,
he sits up-"you'll get more ... imaginative?" Now he's coughing, too.
"Drink some water."
Hyde, shaking his head sullenly, staggers to his feet and starts loping
around the room again. "I don't get it." He is breathless, wheezing. "You want
to toss your career in the garbage can, move out of a rent-controlled apart–
ment, leave your old lady-"
"No," Jekyll interrupts, "I'd like my wife to come with us."
"Far out!" Hyde snorts. "Okay, you want to dump your apartment, drag
your wife away from her friends, kiss off Utterson, let down all those poor
coons waiting on line at your clinic who think you're Dr. Schweitzer, run out
on all those nurses who you never ball. ..." Jekyll nods. "For what?"
"Because I'm not free ."
"Free!" Hyde explodes drunkenly. "Grow up, you big baby."
"But it's true. I live a life that's ... all laid out. Nothing is going to
happen to me. I mean, I know what's going to happen to me. I'm thirty-eight,
and with my health and family history I'll probably live to be ninety. But I
could already write my obituary."
"Big momma's baby!"
"You've already said that."
"Freedom!" Hyde rubs his fist against his eyes. "Man, have you got an old
head!"
"Right," Jekyll says. "That's why it's good for me to be with you."
"Well, don't start thinking I can help you! Jeezus,J've got problemsof my
own." He starts pacing around again. "One more minute and you'll be talking
about happiness." He stops in his tracks, gazing fiercely at Jekyll. "Or love."
His small eyes are reddening.
"Look, Eddy, I'm really sorry about the way she...." Jekyll sees Hyde's
swarthy face going livid with distress. "About ... what's happened
to
you."
"God damn love," moans Hyde. He wipes his nose with the back of his
left hand, and pours himself another drink.
But .nothing, least of all despair, seems to stop Hyde's incessant, ungainly
motility. Jekyll's left foot is starting to fall asleep, and Hyde is getting more
animated. Jekyll starts thinking about how late it is. He rises from the couch,
stretching his arms voluptuously above his head.
"Don't split!" Hyde screeches. As Jekyll drops his arms to .his sides, Hyde
bounds over to where he's standing. "You have to crash here tonight anyway."
