Read Fates and Furies for Free Online Page B

faces.
    From the airless campus of the boys’ prep school to the wonderland of college. Coed bathrooms: soapy breasts. Dining hall: girls tonguing soft-serve ice creams. Within two months, Lotto was called Master of the Hogs. Hoagmeister. It’s not true that he had no standards, it’s simply that he saw the stun in every woman. Earlobes like drupes. Soft golden down edging the temples. Such things outshone the less savory rest. Lotto imagined his life as an antipriest, devoting his soul to sex. He’d die an ancient satyr, a houseful of sleek nymphs gamboling him to the grave. What if his greatest gifts were the ones he employed in bed? [Delusion! Tall men have such miles of limbs that it strains the heart to pump blood to the nether bits. He charmed others into believing him better than he was.]
    His roommates couldn’t believe the parade of girls. Fleabitten women’s studies major with nip rings; townie with a roll cresting outof her acid-washed jeans; neuroscience major, prim part, thick glasses, who specialized in the reverse cowgirl. The roommates would watch the trek through the common room, and when Lotto and the girl disappeared into his room, they would fetch the book they kept with taxonomies.
    Australianopithecus: floppy-haired Aussie, later a famous jazz violinist.
    Virago stridentica: ambiguously gendered punkette Lotto had picked up downtown.
    Sirena ungulatica: valedictorian, velvety face atop a three-hundred-pound body.
    The girls would never know. The roommates didn’t think they were cruel. But when, two months in, they showed the book to Lotto, he was furious. He bellowed, called them misogynists. They shrugged. Women who screwed deserved the scorn they got. Lotto was doing what men do. They didn’t make up the rules.
    Lotto never brought home the men. They didn’t get put in any book. They remained unseen, these ghosts of hungers in his bed, out of it.
    —
    I T WAS THE LAST NIGHT of Lotto’s college play. Hamlet . The theatergoers who came in after the circuit of the cowbell were soaked; clouds that had oppressed the valley all day had split. Ophelia was played naked, her tremendous boobs blue-veined like Stilton cheeses. Hamlet was Lotto and vice versa. Every performance, he’d gotten a standing ovation.
    In the dark wings, he cracked his neck and took a breath into his stomach. Someone was sobbing, someone lit a cigarette. Shuffling of a barn at dusk. Whispers. Yeah, I got a job in banking  . . . She stood upon the balcony, inimically mimicking him hiccupping while amicably welcoming him in . . . Break a leg. Break both!
    Reverberating hush. Curtain opened. Watchmen clomped out. “Who’s there?” Inside Lotto the switch flipped on, and his life receded. Relief.
    Husk of Lotto watched in the wings as he, Hamlet, sauntered on.
    He came to himself again when his doublet was sweat-soaked and he was bowing, and the noise of the audience rose until his final standing ovation. Professor Murgatroyd in the front row, supported between his lover and his lover’s lover, shouting in his Victorian bluestocking’s voice, “Bravo, bravo.” Armful of flowers. Girls he’d slept with, one after the other, hugging him, oily slicks of lip gloss on his tongue. Who’s this? Bridget with the spaniel’s face, oh dear, clutching him. They’d hooked up, what, two times? [Eight.] He’d heard she was calling herself his girlfriend, poor thing. “See you at the party, Bridge,” he said gently, extricating himself. The audience faded into the rain. Ophelia squeezed his arm. See him later? He’d enjoyed the two times they’d met up in the handicapped bathroom during rehearsals. Indeed, he would be seeing her, he murmured, and she carried her mad-girl’s body away.
    He closed himself into a bathroom stall. The building emptied out, front doors locked. When he emerged, the dressing rooms were swept. All was dark. He took his greasepaint off slowly, watching himself in the low wattage. He reapplied