Years of experience with women, years of lustful passes, of attempted seductions, of earnest caresses that led to further caresses—all this fell away in just a few seconds, and what remained was a tender reed of inexperience going back to age twelve, when a young girl’s moonlike face hovered before his much as Sally’s hovered before his face now. That first kiss had been a mild disaster, and somehow every bit of skill in the art of the kiss acquired since then had suddenly disappeared, and he was stuck in the position of instantly learning the entire alphabet all over again so that he might construct a rather complicated sentence.
From somewhere in the depths of his soul, the tribunal that makes these decisions returned from its private chambers and rendered judgment: better to have tried and failed than to spend the rest of your life wondering if Sally Brown had wanted to fool around on her couch and was waiting for you to start. And so, with the eloquence, grace, and cunning of the his former twelve-year-old self, he closed his eyes, pursed his lips, and stuck out his pointy love-seeking head.
Sally performed an effortless feint; not even a cheek was available. He withdrew and opened his eyes. Her expression was remarkably unchanged.
“It’s cold and flu season,” she said.
Instinctively, they both leaned back into their side of the couch, letting the pillows envelop them slightly. Alex felt the burn of humiliation across his neck and shoulders, but he struggled to keep his expression as implacable as hers.
“I don’t have a cold,” he said matter-of-factly. “I take a vitamin C every day. Sometimes twice a day.”
Much to his amazement, she propped her feet back onto his lap. He glanced down at them momentarily, but they had lost their sexual charge. The gesture seemed almost sisterly.
“If I think I’m getting a cold I start taking echinacea and goldenseal like crazy,” she said.
“I’m not getting a cold,” he said. “I’m perfectly healthy.”
“I think you’re right about personal style, about how it should seem really casual and accidental. Except it takes a lot of effort to appear casual. People who have personal style have to work hard at it. It doesn’t just spontaneously combust, it has to be developed.”
“Some people spontaneously combust,” said Alex.
Shortly thereafter Alex excused himself to go to the bathroom, where he was seized with a torrential coughing fit. He pushed his face into a towel and coughed vehemently, then he washed his face, wetted his hair a little, and went back to the couch. He tried to remember what it had been like with Sally before the attempted kiss, in the realm of Maybe, but couldn’t. All he could recall was that there had been a casual and even a somewhat cruel element to his behavior towards her when they first met. He had recognized the necessity of maintaining the threat of cruelty, or at least indifference, but now he had dropped the ball. You can’t be cruel to someone after you’ve tried to kiss her and failed, he thought. As a sort of self-punishment, he returned to the subject of clothing.
“You know what I find very difficult?” he said. “Deciding about the blue blazer thing. Like this, for example.” He held out his arm.
“It’s nice,” she said, a little uneasily, as though she suspected him to be on the verge of a long speech.
“This is a nice jacket. Paul Stewart.” He gave her a knowing look. “The thing is, is it really…me? I mean, is it my own personal style, or is it someone else’s? I’m not sure. I usually wear black jeans and a T-shirt with a sweater over it.”
“I think men look good in blue blazers,” said Sally. She was clearly trying to lighten up the moment. Her voice had a ring of impatience to it, as though she were saying, “Pull yourself together, goddamm it.”
“But the question is, does the blue blazer look good with black jeans?” He gave her the penetrating look of a prosecutor.
“It’s all right with black jeans. Blue jeans might be better, if it has to be jeans,” she said.
“And how about the shoes?” he said, kicking one foot up in the air. “White socks with black shoes. A disaster if you ask me. Yet, you ask, why am I wearing them?”
“I’m not asking.”
“Wait! We are onto something. Don’t you think black shoes and white socks are a bit extreme?
“Extremes are good,” she said. “Though maybe you should try black socks.”
“I’ve been intending to drop this white socks thing for years. Years! Why haven’t I?” His voice was charged now, full of fire.
“Alex, I think you look nice. You shouldn’t worry about this. Worrying is not a good personal style.”
“I sense a personal style crisis coming on,” he said glumly.
“I’m going to dinner soon,” she said. She smiled at him. It was a smile that had leveled men more confident and self-possessed than Alex, and Alex, one leg still extended in the air, was no match for it. The leg came down. “Ansel is coming to pick me up, it’s a long-standing date. He’s just the most incredible man. He just got back from Istanbul and is going through his third round of chemotherapy and is forty-two years old and is just amazing. Anyway, he’s coming by soon. In fact I think I’ve got to get dressed now.”
“All right,” he said. He stood up. “Let’s do this again soon.” He went over and picked up his leather jacket and started to put it on. “This jacket doesn’t go very well with the blazer, does it?” he said. There was a pathetic ring to his voice.
“You need a topcoat,” she said in her sisterly tone. He felt himself start to tremble. His career as a Freshly Minted Coin was, apparently, in its concluding phase. An image of the scolding tribunal of Wave Hill administrators passed before him. She kissed goodbye on the cheek.
“Wow, you have I think the smoothest skin I’ve ever felt. It’s quite an experience,” he said.
“And you’re a little unshaven,” she said, smiling. It was a completely unreadable smile, friendly in a generic sexless way.
“Bye,” he said.
“Bye,” she said. “Hope to see you soon.” She closed the door.
The vestibule had mirrored walls, floor to ceiling, and as Alex stepped towards the elevator he saw a thousand versions of himself moving alongside, each one depicting a man with a blue blazer sticking out unattractively from beneath his black motorcycle jacket. It was a most unwelcome sight. He stood there for a few moments, then looked down at his shoes, which seemed misshapen and in need of a shine.
He walked over to Fifth Avenue and then into dark, lamp-lit Central Park. He liked the park at night, its emptiness, its slight menace. He walked to the gravelly jogging path that snaked around the reservoir. The water was a vast black mirror. The lights from Central Park West and Fifth Avenue glimmered on its surface, and he stared at their reflection. Each shimmering speck on the reservoir was a home, a life; they glittered like stars, but like a star they were all out of reach.
Caller ID
PANIC AT THE VIDEO STORE. TWO MINUTES TO CLOSING, and no decision. Melissa had been standing shoulder to shoulder with Alex in front of the new releases. Now they split up, heading down separate aisles. She paused in front of Classics, and before she could even decide what decade she might be interested in visiting, he returned clutching a box, looking pleased and, she thought, a little cruel, as if this was going to be a movie that would somehow edify and enrich her, as opposed to make her happy.
“Have you ever seen this?” he asked. He held it up.
“No,” she said. “I haven’t.” She wanted to add that there was a reason she hadn’t seen it, which was that she wasn’t that interested in the Vietnam War.
“Closing,” yelled the clerk. They both turned to look at him. He was an avid hockey fan. This, she felt, detracted greatly from the cinema-appreciating vibe of the store. He glowered at them in his blue Rangers jersey.
It was a chilly autumn night and the wind was gusting. He pulled her along brusquely, his arm around her shoulder, and she ducked her chin into the collar of her coat. One hand held the collar against her mouth, the
other was pressed deep into her pocket, balled up in a fist. The short walk to her house made her long for the couch, and when they finally arranged themselves there, she felt a great sense of relief, as though everything up to that moment had been preparation. Now, on the couch, indoors, the night could begin, and their distinct, hardened, separate bodies could relax, commingle, and begin to entwine.
She was in her underwear and a T-shirt, with black socks pulled up over her calves. Her work clothes were in a pile on a nearby chair. Alex was still in his jeans, a T-shirt, and work boots.
The one unfortunate aspect to the situation, from Melissa’s point of view, was the video: Apocalypse Now. Other than a brief shot of Martin Sheen’s bare ass, she was finding it a bit abstract. But she knew that he wanted her to like it, so she leaned into his shoulder, pulled her feet under her, and watched. She could feel the warmth of his chest. He was a warm person, literally.
THEY HAD BEEN together nine months. In the beginning they went out often. There was something exhibitionist about their ventures into the world together, as though they wanted to show each other off, and to revel in their newfound status as one-half of a pair. But lately they’d been spending more and more time at home, her home. She had made an effort to make her living space accommodating and pleasant; it was soft-edged, pillow-strewn, and a bit peachy in atmosphere and color. His place was either barren or pristine, depending on how you looked at it, and their time there was a bit like time in a motel room—exciting, theatrical, and alienating.
Then the phone rang, and Melissa cocked her head at the sound of it, not wanting to walk the ten steps into the kitchen and wanting in equal measure not to subject one of her friends to the humiliation of babbling into the answering machine while the two of them listened.
“I’ll get it,” she said in the middle of the second ring, and got up from the couch.
“Do you want me to press pause?” said Alex.
“No, I’ll just be a second,” she said.
The voice on the phone belonged to Rodney Donoghue. It took her by surprise and made her shiver. It was deep and low and much too intimate.
“Hello, Melissa, it’s Rodney,” he said. “I’m just calling to say hi, see how you are.” He had a way of pronouncing the most innocent comments in a sordid, suggestive manner, as though he were stroking her ass while saying it. This sort of duplicity was, she had come to understand, his specialty—high-mindedness and cordiality providing a thin gloss on his weirdly obsessive and unpleasant nature. His faintly Southern accent was particularly useful in this obscuring cause.
“Hi,” she said, and instinctively glanced at Alex to see if he had registered any anxiety, any falseness, in her voice. She thought she sounded shrill and self-incriminating, but Alex just stared at the screen, watching Martin Sheen sulk on a boat going up the Mekong River.
“I’m just calling because I’ve been thinking about our last conversation,” Rodney said.
You mean the one where I said I didn’t think you were behaving properly and that your behavior was in fact offending me and that I wanted you to stop touching me that way, she wanted to say.
“Uhm, yeah?” she said instead, and concentrated on the background noise—a faint hiss—trying to figure out if he was calling from his cell phone again. When he had last called she had talked with him merrily for an hour, feeling the peculiar liberation and freedom that comes with the implied distance of a phone conversation, only to have him blurt out: “I’m in a car right in front of your building. Why don’t I just come up and we can continue this in person?” She had been so flustered by this that she agreed.
“I thought the conversation didn’t really go the way it should have,” he said now, “which was unfortunate given that we normally have such a fine rapport.”
He was a television talk show host, of the highbrow variety. Rapport was his specialty. She had spent several years of her life concluding many of her evenings lying in bed and watching him nod intelligently at one important, fascinating, and powerful guest after another, interrupting them with penetrating questions and lulling her with his deep, comforting, and faintly paternal voice. Who could blame her for being excited when she met him at a party?
She had rehashed this line of thought many times—Her Innocence at the Beginning. They had met at the party for the New York Film Festival, where she worked as a publicist. She had placed numerous calls to his office repeating the invitation at the instruction of her boss. So it was natural that she should introduce herself. They had chatted amicably and he had listened attentively and nodded as she spoke—just as he did on the show—and she had felt the particular thrill of that rapt, attentive expression he always bestowed upon his guests.
“You’re a very intelligent and perceptive woman,” he had said at one point. “I’m curious to hear suggestions you might have for people on my show.” She was aware that he was flattering her. She didn’t mind. She was flattered to be flattered.
“Uhm, I’m sort of watching a movie,” she said now.
“Which movie are you sort of watching?” he said.
“Apocalypse Now,” she said.
“You can hit pause,” he said.
She wanted to snap something rude and witty at him.
“I’m just going to watch the movie now,” she said instead. “Why don’t we speak later.” This was as terse as she could be without being conspicuous.
“All right. I really wanted to say that I’d like to see you again. I don’t want there to be any awkwardness between us because of my last visit. I enjoy your company and also value your opinions. I’m doing a one-hour special on Rembrandt and I thought you could have some input, maybe even help produce. It’s all very preliminary.”
She was amazed to note her body stiffen a little when he said all this, as though she were a cat being stroked. Her intellect registered the falseness, but she had heard him utter so many words with that homespun Southern accent of his, addressing the guests on his show, that she was instinctively pleased to have such good company in being deceived. She flashed to another moment of weakness, when she had ushered him into her apartment, as though he were there all the time. In a sense, he was. Something very similar to the body that had stood before her had been in her apartment countless times before, but it had been confined to the square television screen. It had been unsettling to have it before her in all its ungainly life-sized reality.
She remembered the weird way his body had occupied space in her apartment, sitting right there on the couch where Alex now sat. It was so strange to see Rodney there, in his suit and tie, smelling faintly of cologne. She didn’t smell the cologne until he got near her, and right away she could picture him applying it, standing in the mirror and letting his face go slack with admiration while thinking: Women love this smell.
He had said kind intelligent words of praise to her, loosened his tie, and then he had put his hand on her thigh and stroked it. There was so much gross sexual energy in that single caress that she had almost allowed him to continue. The idea of letting this overly suave, self-possessed, attractive, and successful older man barge into her life and fuck her, thereby letting his already distorted ego pump even farther out of shape at his success with her, was so repulsive that her mind froze in a kind of fascination when considering it. He stroked her thigh several times and moved closer. She was under a kind of spell. Fortunately, the cologne was nauseating. It was a metaphor for the whole situation. There was something rank, false, and toxic about this man. She slapped his hand away and asked him to leave.
“All right,” she said now. “I’ll talk to you soon.” Her voice softened at the very end, as though to leave the door to Rodney open just a crack. She put the phone down, aware of her moment of duplicity.
She went back to the couch, where Alex sat slouched, clutching the video remote, and as she leaned back against him, she was aware of how much she hoped he had noticed something. She wanted him to call her on it. He was always getting into moods and s
ulks. What she wanted from him was some rage, threat, and anger. She wanted action.
Alex, without looking at her, pressed rewind. Images flickered backwards on the screen. A boat raced backwards down a river, led by a man water-skiing backwards.
“You missed some good parts,” he said. “You should really see the whole thing straight through.” He put his right arm around her, and casually pulled her against him.
“Who was that on the phone?” he asked nonchalantly.
“Jim Milford,” she lied, citing an old friend from college who was familiar to Alex as Just a Friend. She was a terrible liar. Whenever she attempted it she tried to remember what she normally sounded like, and drew an utter blank, and was thus forced to impersonate a self she couldn’t imagine. The words slipped out and she glanced at his expression to see if there was a flicker of suspicion. She half hoped to find it.
There was nothing but Alex’s slack television gaze, focused on the screen, and for a brief moment she hated him for his inertia even more than she hated herself for her gullibility. For a split second she considered blurting it all out, but then decided that would be ridiculous. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Besides, Alex hadn’t earned a confession. She wasn’t going to do all the work.
ALEX KEPT HIS cool. There was nothing to be gained by expressing the intense pang of anger and fear that had shot through him when he heard her voice dip and observed her body twist slightly, turning away from him just before she put the phone down. And now this outlandish lie about who she was talking to, her voice trilling upwards, her nostrils flaring, her desperate glance to see if he noticed. He had always cherished her sincerity and in a way he was touched by this transparency. But he was also furious, disgusted, frightened, and all the emotions that had been coursing through him for weeks were further inflamed by this new complication. He had come to see Melissa as the indispensable shock absorber between him and the world. He didn’t want this buffer, but at the same time, he didn’t want to be shocked.
The Sleep-Over Artist Page 16