Augie smiled and Reuben felt the skin move. "Part of it," the painter said. "Also you have to know how to fix things, cars and such. And you have to fuck a lot of women till it hurts and now and then punch someone in the nose."
Reuben stood poised with the razor and considered. "I am not macho," he confessed.
"Me neither anymore," said Augie. "It's a phase."
The young Cuban went back to his barbering. "You used to punch people in the nose?" he asked.
"No," said Augie. "But not because I didn't want to. Only because I was afraid they'd hit me back."
"To be afraid," said Reuben. "This is not macho."
"No," said Augie. "But everybody is."
Reuben rinsed the razor. The sun was near its zenith, it made a steely mirror of the swimming pool. The tree the Cubans call Mother-in-law made a rattling complaining noise although there did not seem to be a breeze. Reuben looked at Augie's chin. It was odd to be shaving someone else, to be paying such unflinching pore-by-pore attention to another's face, and there was something deeply naked about Augie's skin, pale under the beard, splotched pink from the tug of the blade as the hair was scraped away.
"You have fear?" Reuben didn't exactly mean to ask the question, he just heard himself asking it.
"Damn straight," Augie said. He was going to leave it at that, but there are certain questions that are like siphons, they suction off truth and once the flow starts it continues of itself. After a moment Augie went on. "I used to have a terrible fear of falling short somehow, disappointing myself in some final way, some way that could never be fixed. I'm not afraid of that anymore. No, that's a lie. I still am. But much less. What the hell. But I was terrified of dying down in Cuba, I'll tell you that. Among strangers. Without even saying goodbye to anyone. . . . And you?"
Reuben hesitated. It was his own fears that had led him to ask about Augie's, yet he was unprepared to have the question turned around. He rinsed the razor, looked away a moment. His eyes burned. "I fear to be alone," he said.
English words, Spanish syntax. Augie didn't quite know how to take it. Feared to be alone in a room? Or feared to live his life alone? Augie decided to address the longer-lasting terror.
"You'll find someone," he softly said. "You're a caring, loving man, Reuben. You'll find somebody worthy of you."
Reuben didn't answer. For himself he didn't mind crying, but he was there to help, not to ask for help, and he didn't want to impose his crying on Augie. He pressed his jaws together, then tried to smile. Gently, he pulled the skin along Augie's jaw and went back to shaving him.
But his hand was trembling just a little, the razor veered from its proper angle and sliced through the skin of the painter's chin. With a nauseating vividness Reuben felt the blade pop through the flesh. For a second the cut place was paler than the skin around it, then it filled with a line of blood that formed a fat red drop at its lower verge. Reuben pulled the razor back and looked with shame and horror at what he had done. He had let his own pain conquer him so that he had hurt his friend. Frantically he began apologizing while his free hand reached for a cloth to dab the wound.
Augie turned his head away. "It's only a nick," he said. "I used to cut myself all the time."
But Reuben was not to be comforted. He was sorry in English, he was sorry in Spanish. The tears that he'd choked back now broke loose, the drops were thick as Augie's blood. He fretted with the cloth over the painter's cut chin, got it splotched with blood in half a dozen places. The red blots made him feel queasy, and without a word he dashed into the house to fetch a fresh clean towel.
He had just passed through the open French doors when Nina entered from the front. She saw him with the ferocious midday light glaring at his back. She saw that his face was tormented with some terrible guilt. She saw the razor in his hand, the bloodstained cloth. She lurched forward as though she might perhaps attack him, and she screamed. Or thought she screamed. But before the sound had left her throat she had passed out cold and crumpled to the cool bare wooden floor.
Reuben stood there, tears drying on his cheeks, the razor dangling from his fingers.
The sight of Nina fainting had baffled him but also brought back his composure the way a dreadful piece of news can make a drunk man sober. Suddenly it seemed he had a lot to do, and he wasn't sure of the order he should do it in. He had Augie outside, half shaved and bleeding. He had Nina here, blanched, unconscious, her legs folded under her in a way it seemed they should not go. He put the razor and the bloody cloth on the kitchen counter. He approached Nina and tried to lift her to the sofa. She was limp and unhelpful as a sack of rice, and he dragged her more than carried her. He slipped her shoes off, then grabbed the razor and a new towel and went back out to Augie.